One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'

• What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?
• Shame, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.
• 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.
• What I find most upsetting about this new all-consuming beauty culture is that the obsession with good looks, and how you can supposedly attain them, is almost entirely female-driven.
• Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.
• I've always thought of beauty therapy, 'alternative' treatments and the like as the female equivalent of brothels - for essentially self-deceiving people who feel a bit hollow and have to pay to be touched.
• These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.
• These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.
• My dad didn't drive - the only dad I knew who didn't.
• When I moved out of London 13 years ago, I found a whole other reason not to drive. This was because my new husband Dan, unlike my dad, did drive, and this became a great source of fun and adventure.