Only those who haven't got the wit to speak for themselves would ever want their clothes to do it for them.

It may be a cliché, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.

In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist - as opposed to the UK, where the Queen is probably the best-known animal, vegetable and/or mineral going when it comes to overseas visitors.

The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it; most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.

When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women.

In my third husband I had discovered a blissfully laid-back type who thought it nothing less than hilarious when I misread the map on the way to Wales, so it took us an extra three hours, or when I was sick in a plastic carrier bag during much of the drive back from Devon - a bag that turned out to have a hole in it.

As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.