The price of fame

This is getting beyond a joke. I'm really hacked off with the media's constant intrusion into my personal life, day after day, as if I'm some piece of public property to be picked over by all and sundry.

On Monday it was "Is Nick too thin? A scarily gaunt-looking Nick tottered into the Merchant Hotel as if his legs were too weak to carry him. His ribs were clearly visible through his T shirt. Now anorexia is the word on everyone's lips."

Then on Tuesday came "Is Nick the country's most embarrassingly-dressed man? The skin-tight pants and punk-style leather jacket look really grotesque on a man of his age. The female receptionists at the Europa Hotel were struggling not to laugh."

On Thursday it was reported "At the Fitzwilliam Hotel Nick was looking worryingly pale and haggard, and without his usual companion, the artist and model Tanzi Twitch. Are his vigorous male appetites being satisfied? In short, is he getting enough?"

The endless torrent of lies, false assumptions, smears and abuse is getting me down. I've instructed my lawyers Sue Grabbit and Runne to take immediate action against these nauseating scumbags. As my closest friends know full well, there isn't a word of truth in these scurrilous attacks.

If this is the price of celebrity, if this is what it means to be a household name, I shall have to consider giving it all up and going back to my old job on the sandwich counter at Pret A Manger.

The reality is that I'm a chaste, God-fearing teetotaller with a love of stamp-collecting, cheese-rolling and dressing up in women's clothing. I have an allergy to hedgehogs and I'm honorary president of the East Belfast Garden Gnome Appreciation Society.

I couldn't be more normal if I tried.

Weight crime

Up till now the horror of anorexia has been tackled through model agencies, magazines, TV companies and businesses agreeing not to promote stick-thin, underweight women. But now France is going a stage farther and making such quasi-anorexic images illegal.

The new law, currently going through parliament, will make it a criminal offence to encourage extreme thinness that could lead to ill-health or death. The penalty is two years' jail or a £24,000 fine.

Up to 40,000 people in France could be anorexic, and the cult of super-slimness is widespread. Pro-anorexia websites give young girls advice on lying to their doctors, foods that are easy to vomit, and punishing themselves for eating. Clearly action is needed.

But my question is, will this new law achieve its aims? It sounds all right in theory, but actually proving an offence could be tricky. Just how do you distinguish between a photo of a naturally thin woman, used because it appeals to readers, and the active encouragement of pro-starvation lifestyles?

Fairly straightforward with explicitly pro-anorexia websites, but less so with the ambiguous, run-of-the-mill images the media are full of. Are they just examples of fetching prettiness or are they supporting something more unhealthy? It's hard to say.

I'm reminded of the now discredited English law against 'promoting' homosexuality, which rapidly collapsed because it was impossible to define what was meant by promotion. Did school textbooks featuring gay heroes come under this heading or did you have to be busily seducing young Johnny behind the bike sheds? Confusion reigned and teachers became paranoid.

I suspect this well-intentioned measure could soon turn into a tangled morass. Which would be a shame when it's aimed at such a truly alarming phenomenon.

Going to extremes

After writing about overworked women, I realised how easy it is to overdo things, for quite natural desires to turn into unhealthy obsessions. Like dieting that slides into anorexia and bulimia.

We've all been there, I'm sure. I guess most people see me as a fairly level-headed person who doesn't do extremes, but there are one or two skeletons in the closet.

When I was in my twenties, influenced by stories of Buddhist monks in mountain caves, I decided minimalism was the way to go and tried to simplify my life to the bare essentials. I rented a tiny bedsit, gave away my car, eschewed all luxuries and never took a holiday.

Outside of work, I lived like a hermit, talking to no one, ignoring the rest of the world, contemplating the meaning of the universe. This went on for some months until I fell for a stunningly beautiful woman who visited my spartan lair and threw up her hands in horror at my hairshirt lifestyle.

She took me back to her plushy, sumptuous flat and all my minimalist principles bit the dust. I realised a fanatical puritanism had taken over from pleasure and common sense.

It's easily done. And it's not just the headline addictions like eating disorders you have to guard against. There are plenty of damaging routines you can slip into without realising.

Things like excessive house-cleaning regimes, extreme dedication to work, a weakness for destructive relationships or a self-effacing devotion to an impossible parent.

I've known women who couldn't rest until dust was wiped off a table or a stain removed from the carpet, whose houses had to be pristine and spotless at all times. I've known men who would stay in the office till midnight finishing that vital presentation that would impress the boss and win promotion.

We could all name friends who've been in soul-destroying relationships with hopelessly unsuitable people, constantly denigrated and belittled till they're in pieces. And we've all seen tyrannical elderly parents making relentless demands on tearful offspring who can't bear to walk away.

It's easy to drift into unwitting self-sacrifice for the best of motives. Sometimes it's not other people who enslave us. We naively make our own treadmills.

PS: Grandad has nominated me for the colossally prestigious Break Out Blogger Award. What a sweetie!

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I'm deeply shocked by the pictures of utter filth and squalor at the Kent hospitals where 90 patients died from the superbug Clostridium Difficile. There was such a shortage of nurses patients were told they couldn't be helped to the toilet, they had to relieve themselves in their beds. The beds were so close together the bug spread like wildfire, and there were body fluids and rubbish everywhere. And this is despite billions of pounds being poured into the NHS. What the hell was done with the money?

Far too thin

I've always been thin, especially when I was young and verging on the anorexic, so the women I know are always trying to fatten me up and make me 'healthy'.

Giant chocolate cookies, jam-smothered scones, chunky sandwiches and bowls of chips are pushed in my direction to stop me wasting away any further.

Actually my weight is perfect for my height, but the widespread prevalence of beer bellies and hefty hips makes me look like the oddity. I was actually asked the other day if I had ever been anorexic, so commonplace is it these days.

Even Jenny, who's well used to my body by now, still thinks I'm too skinny and ought to fill out a bit. But she just wants a comfier backrest, if you ask me.

Those who struggle constantly with their weight insist I must be naturally thin and able to stuff myself silly with calorie-rich titbits without gaining an ounce. Well, that was true once but nowadays I have to watch the pounds too.

It's ironic that if I were female I could savour my lucky conformity to the willowy stereotype of Ms Drop Dead Gorgeous. But physical size is fairly low-down on the Ideal Man checklist - what matters more is the size of his bank account and the size of his home. And possibly the size of something more personal.

I'm constantly amazed by the well-upholstered, ample-bellied males that women are happy to be seen with. The only arena in which male thinness is a definite plus seems to be the gay world - I certainly stirred a bit of interest there when I was younger (a lot younger).

For me though, the odd remark about my thinness is just amusing. But it's the thin celebs I feel sorry for. If there's no bulging flesh to be seen, anorexia is the word on everyone's lips - and a hundred denials mean nothing.

(see also Size Zero)