I'll declare my own interest right here at the start and admit that, like the vast majority of people, I find youthful looks appealing.

I know that Brighton is famously a mixture of the seedy and the elegant, but in the summer of 2001 seediness swamped elegance hands down.

What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?

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

Make no mistake, most women are well aware that they've never had it so good; when they enter a spa or salon, it is purely a hair/nails thing, a prelude to an evening of guilt-free fun.

I feel even less patience with transsexuals.

There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.