"Don't do me no favours!" is one of my favourite ever retorts; nothing else quite hits the spot when one is the ungrateful recipient of faint praise from a person for whom one had less than zero regard anyway. I was able to use it a lot recently, and with great gusto, when a parade of assorted sad sacks lined up to give me their verdict on my magnificent televisual entertainment Chavs, most of them coming to the conclusion that, oooh, I couldn 't really be a proper chav, "cos I'm clever, innit, like a real middle-class person!" My reaction to this back-handed compliment was to hoist up my Burberry skirt, reach for a Bacardi Breezer and sneer — cheers, Lady Muck, but if you're the alternative, then I'm a chav and lovin' it, trust me!
In a variation on this, when I was really fat a couple of years ago, there was a ceaseless geek chorus of people — who, without exception, I wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot sex-toy, had I been thin, fat or, quite frankly, dead — who nevertheless proceeded to judge me and find me wanting, as though there was ever a chance I'd so much as spit in their direction. I think I've said before that it's always your real male mingers who seem to have what I think of as The Magic Mirror — a special sort of looking-glass that sends them back a reflection of perfection and therefore leads them to believe that they can rate, grade, pass or fail women's looks without looking really self-deluded and comical. Tellingly, it's never attractive men who talk about "dogs" — just the ugly ones like Frank Skinner who memorably said that single women over 30 were all "rough as arseholes". Well, to quote the old music hall joke, if my dog had a face like Mr Skinner's, I'd shave its bum and teach it to walk backwards.
Some men — ugly ones — have a weird idea of exactly how much well-balanced, self-adoring women value their looks. Admittedly, this may partly be because there are such large numbers of unbalanced, self-loathing women about who act as though life's not worth living if they put on half a pound. But if everything is working properly, women can actually see the plus side of losing their looks — think of Marianne Faithfull, who claims she let herself get fat in order to finally ditch Mick Jagger, or Brigitte Bardot, who could obviously have afforded the very best cosmetic surgery money could buy yet was obviously just too fed up with being the most beautiful woman in the world to bother. While not in the same league, obviously, I myself got fat on purpose at certain points during my first two marriages in order to dissuade my husbands from attempting sex with me, because I knew that they had the usual insecure man's kneejerk fear of copping off with a fat girl. Sadly, it didn't work half as well as I'd hoped, but I still got a massive kick from displeasing them — from losing their approval.
I prefer being a size 14 to a size 20, because you can wear nicer clothes and because Dawn French can no longer claim you as one of her gang in that let's-pick-on-thin-girls way she sometimes exudes if you're a bit of a famous porker. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss certain things about being a blimp — specifically, being invisible to a certain extent, and avoiding — it feels like escaping, actually — male attention and approval en masse. I realise that to insecure women, or ones who grew up only moderately attractive, this would be a vision of Hell. But when you grow up from the age of 12 with extreme good looks, losing them feels like a sort of liberty. I know that lots of women yearn to be young, tall, slender blondes, but I've never been able to understand why on earth a person would purposely turn themselves into something that might attract the sexual attentions of Rod Stewart.
If attracting the eye of Rod Stewart is every sane woman's nightmare, then receiving the social approval of Elton John must run a close second; still, in the case of the Chief Concubine, Camilla Parker Bowles, one supposes that beggars can't be choosers. So Mrs P B must have been well made up to hear Dame Elt simper: "When Charles married Diana, it wasn't the right couple getting married at the right time. Charles can marry the right woman now. She's a hoot! " Talk about the final nail in the coffin. Not to worry, though — Elt will have turned on her in six months' time, just like he's turned on, to date, Robbie, George M and Madonna. In fact, not a week seems to pass without a new strop issuing forth from Elton Towers. Approval interruptus would be another way of putting it.
Whom we choose to approve of often says so much more about us than them. I was rather surprised to read in The Sunday Times last week that "gay rights campaigners have been snubbed by the Government for fear of upsetting Muslim voters", referring to a new Bill that will give Islamists protection against religious discrimination but fails to do the same on a sexual basis for gayers, despite previous plans. Downing Street apparently feels that Muslims might be "offended" if they were "lumped together" with pooves, of all the babyish complaints! This despite the fact that there are thought to be three million gay voters in this country compared with only 1.3 million Muslims.
It's not the first time that gay people have suffered thanks to a politician's schoolgirl crushes on (pace Alan Partridge's weird IRA fantasies) those big butch Muslims; just think of Mayor Livingstone's courting of the repulsive Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who advocates wife-beating and the murder of gay men. What's that all about? You can't help but think that the Mayor saw one too many Fry's Turkish Delight TV commercials at an impressionable age; oooh, those sheikhs, they're so HUNKY!
It's funny — literally — but as I get older I find that the explanation to the various different character traits one comes across in the course of life is best illuminated not by any high-flown tome of poetry or philosophy but by the classic comic novel Cold Comfort Farm, published in 1932 by Stella Gibbons. Who does this sound like, pray? "Persons of Aunt Ada's temperament were not fond of a tidy life. Storms were what they liked; plenty of rows, and doors being slammed, and jaws sticking out, and faces white with fury, and faces making unnecessary fuss at breakfast, and plenty of opportunities for gorgeous emotional wallowings, and partings for ever, and misunderstandings, and interferings and spyings, and, above all, managing and intriguing. Oh, they DID enjoy themselves! They were the sort that went trampling all over your pet stamp collection and then spent the rest of their lives atoning for it. But you would rather have had your stamp collection." Dear Dame Elton/Red Ken — please take note.