Back to normal

We all like to think that we never worry about being "normal", that we just do our own thing, however weird or unusual it might be. I mean, who wants to be "normal"?

Not true of course. The fact is that we're always striving to be normal, whether we're aware of it or not. We may all want to do our own thing, but we don't want to be seen as a total loony. Nor do we want to be seen as undignified, embarrassing or vulgar. In private we have a very precise image of an appropriate public persona and we stick to it meticulously.

We don't go around

Sobbing with grief and misery
Laughing hysterically
Talking to ourselves*
Wearing pyjamas, wedding dresses or pink polka-dot suits
Ranting about the state of the world
Picking our nose or farting
Pointing at fat people
Smashing car windows

Dignity is very important to us. We don't want to be viewed as a figure of fun, an emotional wreck, or someone hopelessly out-of-control. We want to appear sensible, mature, responsible - in a word, dignified. And what is being dignified but acting normally, behaving in a way that other sensible, mature individuals would expect us to?

The occasional lack of dignity in suitable circumstances is fair enough - at a funeral or a party or a divorce hearing. But we soon put a stop to it and reassert our everyday decorum. We'll happily defend the idea of eccentricity but actually most of us steer well clear of it. We may think Grayson Perry's fabulous but we're not going to greet our own neighbours dressed as a small girl with a lollipop.

We're all more normal than we like to think we are.

* The less said about that the better 

Scrambled brain

I've had a nasty infection for a week and my brain is scrambled.

I feel like Francis Gilroy in David Park's book The Truth Commissioner:

"Never before has Gilroy felt his life so full of words and so depleted of those that carry meaning. Some days it feels he's wearing a straitjacket or his brain is clamped in a vice. He wants a new way to speak; he wants whatever's still ahead of him to be lived in a different way."

Normal service may or may not be resumed in due course.

Watch this space.

Hot off the press

Once again I'm baffled by the latest publishing sensation. In this case it's a trilogy of erotic books about a wealthy businessman and a young graduate by the author E L James. They're the fastest selling paperbacks of all time, even surpassing Harry Potter.

What the attraction is I couldn't tell you, as I haven't read them. Apparently they involve BDSM* and are extremely explicit. Guardian reviewer Jenny Colgan however finds them surprisingly tame and innocent: "The sole erotic thing anyone ever does is bite or play with their bottom lip."

I daresay it's one of those situations where a book gains a racy reputation way beyond its actual content, and word of mouth and idle curiosity mean thousands of people are surreptitiously buying it to find out what all the fuss is about.

That's despite a bevy of reviewers making withering comments on the "treacly clichés", "awful descriptions", "clunky prose" and "asinine phrases". But then most book-readers aren't attracted by high-flown literary outpourings, whatever we culture vultures might think. They just want a good read on the beach.

It seems that some of the interest is rooted in the sexual politics of the three books, which revolve around a virginal woman's affair with a more experienced man keen on sexual domination. Feminists have argued fiercely about whether the heroine is liberated and free-thinking or stuck in some sexist dark age.

Groundbreaking they certainly aren't, according to Jenny Colgan. She thinks they're heavily derivative, the businessman being straight out of "Pretty Woman" and his apartment recalling Frasier Crane's penthouse - "I kept expecting Eddie to arrive and do something amusing on the expensive furniture." The flirtatious emails are lifted from Bridget Jones while the sex is indebted to Ann Rice.

What has surely boosted the trilogy's sales is the much-noted quirk that slightly embarrassing books can be read unobtrusively on e-readers, since unlike a paperback they don't broadcast the content to all and sundry. So the demure middle-aged woman on the bus can be happily enjoying the whips and handcuffs regardless of the other passengers.

But however great my curiosity, I don't think I'll be sampling Ms James any time soon. I suspect my own fantasies are far racier than anything she could have concocted.

* for those from a sheltered background, bondage domination and sadomasochism 
The three books are Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed 
PS: This review is hilarious 

Unnatural practices

Those who rant against homo-sexuality usually trot out the religious line that it's an "unnat-ural practice", unlike the entirely natural business of heterosexuality.

Lord Ken Maginnis, a prominent Northern Irish politician, cranked out this familiar smear in a radio interview recently, and was roundly condemned for it. For good measure he also described gays as "deviant" and linked them with bestiality.

But a moment's thought exposes his use of the term "unnatural" as idiotic and detached from reality.

If you use the basic yardstick that anything you come up with yourself is "natural" while anything that has to be taught you by someone else is "unnatural", then clearly Lord Maginnis has got his nappies in a bit of a knot.

Homosexuality is an excellent example of something you come up with yourself, a personal preference that you merely act upon. Religion on the other hand is an equally excellent example of something that has to be taught you by someone versed in religious concepts and principles. A child doesn't spontaneously believe in God or spout the Ten Commandments.

In which case Lord Maginnis has got everything totally upside down, and it's homosexuality that's natural while religion is profoundly unnatural.

If Lord Maginnis wants to get rid of everything that's unnatural, some rather vital activities would disappear. The entire education system for a start, plus the health service, transport of all kinds and the English language itself. He would find himself living in a cave, wearing an animal fur, and grunting. Is that natural enough for you, Mr Maginnis?

Pic: the drop dead gorgeous Ken Maginnis 

Generation game

I so take for granted my childless status that I've never thought very much about the ways in which my life differs from that of the average parent. It's only occasionally that something said by a harassed mum or bemused dad gives me an insight. For example:

1) I can never be hopelessly embarrassed by my child. I needn't worry about the grunting, shaggy-haired, sloppily-dressed, drunken young lad staggering along the pavement. He's not mine.

2) My child can never be hopelessly embarrassed by me. I can lurch around the house playing air guitar, spouting street slang or wearing bright pink pyjamas without being told to act my age and stop trying to be a teenager.

3) I don't have to keep coughing up money because my child needs tuition fees, a flat deposit, a car, tickets for Lady Gaga, new clothes for an interview or a flight home from Australia.

4) I don't have to worry that my over-suggestible offspring will end up a druggie, an anorexic, an alcoholic, a prostitute, a banker or a confidence trickster.

5) My offspring never has to worry that I'll squander the inheritance, go senile, become bedbound, fill the house with cats, take in a deranged lodger or fill the fridge with rotting food.

6) My child doesn't have to waste precious hanging-out time showing me how to fix the computer/ the iPad/ the mobile/ the lost emails. Or explaining the latest fad for corsets/ super-bling/ silly bandz/ half baldies/ vampires.

7) I don't have to provide ongoing emotional support over my child's traumatic break-up with the love of his/her life and daily threats of suicide.

8) My child doesn't have to provide ongoing emotional support as daddy and mummy go through a bitter and messy divorce with each one blaming the other for causing it.

Of course, in return for these advantages some may think I've missed out on the most wonderful and rewarding experience of my life - having children. Well, what you've never had, you never miss, as they say. And I've never had the teeniest parental urge.

I'm not entirely free of such domestic headaches though. Jenny and I are quite wayward enough to cause each other hopeless embarrassment. Or frantic worries. Or bug-eyed disbelief. But at least I don't have to fly her home from Down Under.

Memory lapses

It's really most unfair to criticise the Prime Minister for his constant amnesia over his links with the Murdoch empire and whether he knew about various corrupt/ immoral/ illegal activities that were going on.

I mean, give him a break. Okay, so his memory failed him over 20 times*. But we've all been there. We've all had memory lapses from time to time. We all have hectic lives, rushing from pillar to post, trying to keep all the balls in the air, trying to keep it all together. We can't remember every little detail.

If a media tycoon asks you to bend a few rules so he can get his hands on a tasty little business with no questions asked, you're not necessarily going to remember, are you? Especially if you're being distracted by the gorgeous, pouting Rebekah Brooks with her big hair and flirtatious glances. Obviously, a man loses his concentration in such circumstances.

Heavens above, who remembers all these trivial minutiae nowadays? There's so much to absorb and our brains are only so large. There's too much new information jostling for attention, shoving all the old stuff out of the way, pushing it down into some inaccessible corner of our grey matter. Who can retrieve all these scraps at a moment's notice?

Just last week Jenny asked me if it was true that I was seen at a notorious "house of pleasure" with a certain buxom blonde. I had to say that quite honestly I couldn't remember everything I'd done that afternoon, particularly with all the potent medication I was taking for my athlete's foot. As far as I could recall I was discussing an ambiguous passage in Deuteronomy with my local vicar. Well, it was either that or Leviticus, I'm not entirely certain.

No, I''m sure the Prime Minister is genuinely forgetful. After all, he did accidentally leave his daughter in a pub in Buckinghamshire a couple of months ago. His memory isn't what it used to be.

* when he appeared at the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press 

Imagine

Just for a change, how about giving reality the brush-off? How about letting our imaginations out to play?

Imagine a woman in the middle of a field

Imagine the field growing bigger and bigger

Imagine the sky turning pink

Imagine another woman in a small plane

Imagine a column of smoke on the horizon

Imagine a hundred white butterflies

Imagine the women are thinking of circles

Imagine the circles are growing bigger and bigger

Imagine they're buzzing like bees

Imagine they're floating like clouds

Imagine the circles have escaped

Imagine the women have escaped

Imagine the field is empty

Imagine the plane is on the ground

Imagine a thousand white butterflies

Imagine a wrinkle in the sky

Imagine the women brushing their hair

Imagine the women remembering their past

Imagine the women walking on tiptoe

Imagine their soft breath

Years and tears

Are broken relation-ships harder to cope with as you get older? Are we less resilient, less optimistic, less forgiving? Do we have more invested in them, so that failure comes as more of a blow?

Personally, I couldn't say, as my present relationship is of very long standing. I can only look at what happened when I was young, when I did in fact get over doomed relationships quite easily.

Of course that wasn't just a question of age. It was also because the relationships had been short, or half-hearted to begin with, or I had my eye on someone else anyway.

The older you are, the longer your relationships are likely to have lasted, so they're harder to end for that reason rather than age in itself. Although I think it's also true that as you age you become more dependent on relationships and feel more bereft and beleaguered if they fold. You have less confidence that you can simply bounce back and carry on.

It also comes as more of a shock if someone you've felt totally secure with for many years suddenly announces that they don't feel the same and their affections have moved elsewhere.

I think it's true too that as you get older, relationships seem more important than they did when you were young, and break-ups seem more disastrous. All around you there are happy couples and close friends enriching each others' lives in a hundred ways, and anything that depletes that precious store looks like a tragic waste.

Or can younger people be just as traumatised and shattered by broken relationships as those who're older, especially if they idealise their partners more and expect a perfect emotional harmony that's unattainable?

All I know is that I'm very blessed to have a relationship that's endured for so long, when many people are battered by one disappointment after another, forever asking themselves what went wrong and why others seem to have the magic touch.

An awful likeness

One of the worst things you can say to most people is either "You're turning into your mother" or "You're turning into your father." Given that we're all acutely aware of our parents' failings, the idea that we might be reproducing them sends a shiver down our spine.

Even if we're thinking more of our parents' virtues, we still don't want to be told that we're merely a carbon copy of a parent, we want to have our own identity and take our own route through life.

I certainly don't like to be told that I take after my father, who in my opinion had a stack of unpleasant traits I spent most of my time trying consciously to avoid. Self-righteous bullying, among other things.

It helps that he hasn't been around for 24 years. Once a parent is gone, you're no longer exposed to the character flaws you disliked, and you're less likely to copy them. And when nobody can see the two of you together any more, they're less prone to see resemblances. I'm especially fortunate since Jenny never actually met my father and knows nothing about him except what I choose to reveal. So it's extremely rare for her to utter that dread phrase "You're turning into your father."

But it says something about our underlying view of our parents that if we're told we're morphing into one of them, our reaction is invariably one of shock and horror. My God, you can't be serious? You think I'm like my mother? This is terrible! Even if we're aware of all their good points, we never say "I'm like my mother? That's fantastic. How lovely of you to say so!" No, we always assume the worst, that the other person can see some vile, hideous trait that makes us thoroughly unattractive.

But as far as I'm concerned, I'm not like my father in any way at all. Absolutely, positively not. And you can't say any different as you've never met him. So there.

Sick joke

Anna's six year old daughter Charly fought bravely against cancer for two years before she finally died. All her online followers were grief-stricken. Then they discovered the truth. Neither Anna or Charly existed, and the whole thing was an elaborate hoax*.

It seems such hoaxers are common, and they tell their stories with such convincing details that other people are completely taken in, to the extent of sending money and gifts and giving regular emotional support.

What on earth possesses people to carry out such deliberate frauds on the unsuspecting public and feel no guilt or shame at what they are doing? Are they simply desperate for attention? Do they enjoy portraying themselves as embattled victims? Do they just like the idea of fooling gullible people? Whatever the motive, they are cynically exploiting our trust in the genuineness of onliners, whom we assume to be telling the truth unless we discover otherwise.

The syndrome has been named "Munchausen by internet" after those individuals who pester health services with imaginary but cleverly-faked illnesses that call for extensive treatments and hospital admissions.

One woman called Cara, on the American west coast, conned her internet visitors that she had cancer, HIV, anorexia and heart problems. She posted pictures wearing an oxygen mask and feeding tube, and a video in which she struggled to speak. She was eventually rumbled, and vanished.

Many women fake pregnancy and childbirth, stealing ultrasound pictures and baby photos, and even using ultra-realistic dolls.

But even if the motive is attention-seeking, it's a very convoluted and laborious way of doing it. Why not just get onto a bus and start ranting and raving? Why not just go out in fancy dress? Why go to such ridiculous lengths, and why the need for such bare-faced deceit?

* Information from the Macmillan online cancer forum, which "Anna" joined. 
..................................................................................
PS: I've had a complaint that I haven't sufficiently acknowledged the BBC article by Jolyon Jenkins which is the source of much of the information above. I freely admit to having reused information from his article, I'm very happy to explicitly acknowledge him as the source, and I'm sorry if he got the impression the post was entirely my own work.

I also freely admit that I lift material from all sorts of media sources, as do bloggers generally, but I hope I don't give the impression that it's based on personal research. Where I use outside material, I always link to the original source, though I accept this may not be seen as explicit enough.

Dividing line

I guess we all try to steer a careful line between normality and eccentricity. On the one hand we don't want to be normal, which means boring, predictable, obvious, stereotyped and just like everyone else. On the other hand we don't want to come across as some raving loony so detached from social norms that everyone gives us a wide berth.

I don't think there's much danger of my being seen as normal, since so many of my views and feelings are way out of line with other people's, or at least other people's as depicted by newspaper headlines, cabbies and the old geezer in the supermarket.

There's a much bigger risk of my turning into a wild-eyed eccentric, frothing and fizzing about every controversial issue and becoming the local laughing-stock that nobody takes seriously. I sometimes have to rein myself in and refrain from the sort of off-the-wall opinion that makes people knit their brows in bewilderment and ask me if I'm feeling all right.

I often have to ask myself "What would a normal person do in this situation?" and then act accordingly. Or alternatively, if the thought of behaving like a normal person, even for a few minutes, makes me distinctly queasy, I just keep quiet and wait for everyone else to enlighten me as to what the normal response might be.

When I come across someone who is conspicuously, dramatically eccentric, flouting every known rule of normal conduct with manic glee, I shudder and hope fervently that my own behaviour is still well short of such lurid extremes.

It's hard to tell though. I'm eccentric enough already, what with being a feminist, a socialist, a vegetarian, a Royal Jubilee refusenik, an Olympics don't-care, a Dexter Dalwood fan. Would it take much more to propel me into the heady realms of nutterhood?

But it's all relative, isn't it? It doesn't take much to feel eccentric in this particular neighbourhood, packed as it is with God-fearing churchgoers and Union Jack-wavers. If I was camping out at some mud-drenched anti-capitalist rock festival near Stonehenge, I would probably feel completely at home - and sickeningly normal.

Footnote: I guess at the end of the day, whether I feel normal or eccentric is pretty academic, because the only thing that really matters is whether other people accept me or not.... 

Role reversal

Good grief, he's asking for it.
Fancy going out like that.
He's just looking for trouble.
He's got no sense at all.
Etc.

Rude and crude

It's still not possible for a woman to walk down a street confident her privacy will be respected and she will not at some point be intruded on and harassed by some unknown man who feels she owes him some attention.

Research by the organisation End Violence Against Women has found that 41% of London women under the age of 34 have been subjected to sexual harassment in the street, and a third have received unwanted sexual attention on trains and buses.

Will men ever get the message that women are not sexual playthings provided for their personal pleasure but are other human beings whose lives are their own and nobody else's? Answer - only if they come under a lot more pressure than they're exposed to at the moment.

As usual, reports on the research call for changed attitudes from just about everybody - councils, police, government, public transport staff. Everybody that is except the people actually causing the problem - men.

Where is the emphasis on teaching men to respect women and not invade their privacy? When are men going to be told firmly and forcefully, just stop harassing women. Stop it now. Or you'll be ostracised and isolated by the whole community.

But no, it's still women who're advised to change their behaviour to ward off harassment, as if they're the ones to blame. They should dress differently, avoid certain areas, not go out, take taxis, stay sober, not look too friendly.

Women are still seen as asking for it. When in reality it's men who're asking for it. Not even asking, assuming their male prerogative. Assuming their feudal entitlement. Assuming they're God's gift to women. Well, they're not. They're just predatory arseholes.

Declining manners?

One of my blogmates recently deplored the decline of table manners, and pointed out several distasteful habits she often observed.

I was surprised to see how many people agreed with her over the habits in question, and how little, on the other hand, I myself was bothered.

I really wondered what all the fuss was about. I have to say that when I'm eating with other people I'm much more interested in how intelligent and engaging the conversation is than in how exactly they're eating their food.

Unless they're throwing their food all over the floor, or commenting on how badly it was cooked, or saying they're allergic to practically everything on offer, I don't really care how they eat just as long as they're enjoying themselves and enjoying the assembled company.

But for the record, these were the habits under discussion:

1. Talking with your mouth full
2. Starting to eat without waiting for others
3. Answering the phone while others are talking
4. Hitting your teeth with your cutlery
5. Not using cutlery
6. Hoovering through the laid-out dishes
7. Texting during the meal

I do object to people texting during the meal, as I expect them to be contributing to the conversation and not trying to be somewhere else at the same time. But other than that I'm very laid-back about other people's eccentric and unconventional habits. After all, my own table manners are far from perfect and no doubt give rise to ribald comments as soon as I'm out of earshot.

So am I really untypically tolerant or are others absurdly fastidious?

Feckless scroungers

The anti-public services and anti-welfare state brigade are having a field day, using the recession as an excuse to kick the most vulnerable and deprived citizens in the teeth and remove as much state support from them as possible.

Politicians and columnists alike are bemoaning the 101 evils of welfare. It goes to the undeserving. It stops people working. It makes them lazy. It stops them standing on their own two feet. It's beset by fraud. It encourages single motherhood and large families. And on and on.

None of these hysterical claims  are true. They're disproved time after time by thorough research and a look at the statistics. But this doesn't stop the halfwits and ideologues from digging up anecdotal and untypical stories to make sweeping and utterly false generalisations about the entire rollcall of claimants.

Stories of massive families living in mansions. Stories of the alleged disabled running marathons. Stories of workshy scroungers lying in bed all day. Stories of widescreen TVs and new cars provided by the taxpayer.

This ferocious black propaganda is smoothing the way for the government to cut benefits to the disabled, the sick, the unemployed and struggling families on a colossal scale, with the passive agreement of large swathes of the misinformed general public.

There's been much publicity about the family of 17 on state benefits, publicity that ended in tragedy a few days ago when six of the children died in an arson attack. What was the point of singling out this family for criticism? None, except to suggest they were feckless, irresponsible layabouts.

Large numbers of innocent people who genuinely need help are being penalised because of this politically-motivated smear campaign. And those doing the smearing are mostly well-off and highly unlikely to need any state benefits themselves. Their callousness and viciousness is breathtaking.

PS: May 31. The parents, Mick and Mairead Philpott, have been charged with murdering the six children. 

Back from the brink

Don Ritchie lived close to the Gap, a notorious clifftop suicide spot in East Sydney. But while others would just shrug their shoulders and wonder why people top themselves, he would offer a kind word and a smile and try to convince them life was worth living after all.

Over the years Don Ritchie saved between 160 and 500 people from throwing themselves onto the rocks. But not any longer. The man who was named "The Angel of the Gap" has just died at the age of 85.

"He could read some people needed help" said his sister Sue. He would offer them a kind word and befriend them, and invite them back home for a cup of tea and a bite to eat. "That was often all that was needed to turn people around."

He received presents, Christmas cards and letters from those he saved, sometimes decades later. "It's really rewarding knowing that the action I took changed the course of their lives and got them back on track" he said.

What impresses me is that he was so sure the would-be suicides didn't really want to die, and so sure some temporary crisis meant they were looking at their life in a distorted way, that he was bold enough to intervene and try to change their mind.

He refused to say "It's got nothing to do with me." He refused to just pass by on the other side and say it was someone else's problem. He refused to accept that their lives were as black and hopeless as they made out.

I tend to assume that someone who is suicidal has been that way for so long, with the sense of despair and torment growing ever deeper and all-consuming, that second thoughts are unlikely. But Don Ritchie clearly had other ideas, and acted on them.

I wonder if another of the locals will step into his shoes and take on the same role, or if potential suicides will now simply jump off the cliff with nothing to stop them.

Pic: Don Ritchie at the Gap 

Making the break

Even after all these years, I still feel a bit guilty about some of the breakups I caused, and the possibly dubious reasons I came up with.

It was a Guardian piece "42 reasons to break up with someone" that made me recall some of the grounds I had used myself. For example:

1) She was a chain-smoker, and I hate cigarette smoke.
2) His real personality was buried under his speed*-addiction.
3) He/she was just terminally boring.
4) She was totally self-centred.
5) She was politically poles apart from me.
6) She was terrible at sex.
7) She was too intense/neurotic/anxious.
8) She was too wild/whacky/off-the-wall.
9) She wasn't interested in politics/art/anything intellectual.
10) She was too deferential and unassertive.

Of course when it comes to the crucial moment to call it off, the specific reasons are usually ignored for fear of a long and pointless squabble about whether the other person really is self-centred or neurotic or useless at sex.

We settle for some customary cliché about the relationship not working, or not going anywhere, or screwing us up, and leave the other person to work out the reasons - which have probably been brought up often enough anyway.

But even though I always told myself the breakup was inevitable, I would still feel a bit guilty about it. Was I being too demanding and expecting them to be someone they were not? Was I being too impatient and not giving the relationship enough time to grow?

At the end of the day I just had to trust my own instincts and accept that if the relationship felt wrong it was wrong and there was nothing more to be said. There was no point in analysing it to death. And if the other person was upset, it really couldn't be helped.

In any case, the person I broke up with might well have been equally unhappy about the relationship and been relieved rather than upset when it ended.

And I hope those women and men who broke up with me don't feel too guilty about it. If they thought we were incompatible, no doubt we were, and I bear them no grudges. But then again, I'm lucky enough to have found someone I am compatible with. Many people unfortunately never do.

* amphetamine, that is 

Still alive

When I was a teenager, I was firmly convinced I wouldn't live beyond thirty. I guess I felt vulnerable, fragile, at the mercy of unpredictable events that could easily finish me off.

I would be in a car crash, or have a premature heart attack, or be viciously mugged. I would never be old enough to have wrinkles or arthritis or a pension. I'd be a pile of ash long before that.

So now I'm 65 I still find it extraordinary that I've survived to such a ripe old age without the expected calamity carrying me off in the meanwhile. How come I'm still here? How come I'm alive to see the 2012 Olympics, wind farms, Louise Mensch*, Barack Obama and the internet? Which guardian angel is hovering over me, keeping me from harm?

I'm very philosophical about my age though. I have no desperate urge to live to a hundred. I don't see that as a dazzling achievement. And as for living beyond thirty, well, I'm profoundly grateful I met Jenny at the age of 34, naturally. But if I'd snuffed it in my twenties and skipped a few decades, so what? I'd never have met Jenny, but then, what you've never had, you never miss, as they say.

I suppose my assumption of a brief lifespan was partly connected with my constant sense of being different from everyone else. If most people lived to a hoary old age, then ergo, being the habitual exception, I would peg out in my prime.

There was no concrete reason why I should die early. I wasn't addicted to drugs or alcohol. I didn't have a life-threatening illness. I wasn't doing a dangerous job. I was perfectly healthy. Yet I was convinced I couldn't possibly reach middle age, that that was an experience I would never know.

And now here I am, with the wrinkles and the pension. And still with a sense of having cheated my natural destiny. How did that happen?

*Louise Mensch - Tory MP who subjected James and Rupert Murdoch to ruthless questioning over the phone hacking scandal 

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.

Hairy females

Every so often there's a public questioning of why women have to shave. What's wrong with having hairy arms and legs, demands a rebellious female, to a wave of shock and outrage from her more conventional sisters.

The latest renegade is Emer O'Toole in the Guardian, who says she has now resisted shaving for 18 months and found it isn't the problem she thought it would be. She's quite happy to be hairy, and so apparently are most of the men she comes across, including her current boyfriend.

Yes, people sometimes giggle or make comments about her hairiness, but that's their problem, not hers. Children are generally curious rather than critical, wondering why women shave in the first place. She doesn't mention her academic colleagues at the University of London but presumably they aren't bothered.

Of course it's relatively easy for a middle-class leftie Londoner to get away with such scandalous gender-defying insurrection, but I wonder how easy it would be in less enlightened communities. The reaction in the average suburban street would surely be frosty enough to send her running for cover.

The problem is that the vast majority of women have been so thoroughly conditioned into the idea that body hair is repulsive, unhygienic and masculine that from puberty onwards the daily ritual of frantic depilation becomes firmly entrenched, particularly when every other woman looks impeccably waxed and plucked and lasered.

I imagine also that Emer is lucky enough to have only a modest sprinkling of body hair, intriguingly different rather than wincingly unattractive. Some women unfortunately have such rampant growth they simply wouldn't contemplate letting it all hang out.

I must say my own attitude to body hair is somewhat ambivalent. The idea of leaving your body as it is without forcing into some arbitrary gender stereotype is obviously appealing. On the other hand I've always found thickets of body hair either on men or women distinctly unalluring, and given the choice between women keeping their body hair or men removing it, I would actually opt for the latter.

Not that the female hair-purging routine is going to stop any time soon, despite the brave boycott by one truculent columnist. Neither are the lads going to uproot their beards, chest hair and pubic undergrowth, however much their womenfolk might fancy the idea. Some things are sacred.

PS: What's the norm in gay relationships, I wonder? Shaving or not shaving? I've no idea.

(Emer O'Toole's piece on body hair is hilarious and worth a read)