For reasons I am not a party to, and into which I will not dig too deeply, my wife bought home one of these cheap, picture filled ‘celebrity’ magazines the other day. I suspect, of course, that there is some buried mention of Johnny Depp somewhere within it’s shabby pages although as the people write the copy, and I use the term ‘write’ loosely, can hardly string a coherent sentence together I doubt the worth of anything within.

I find the whole ‘cult of celebrity’ impossible to get my brain around actually and tend to dismiss it, perhaps unfairly, as ‘air-head’ reading for people who don’t. If it has any actual value then I would be interested to hear and know just what it is.

So I skimmed through these cheap-paper pages and quickly realised that amongst the names mentioned in the big red headlines, I recognised, perhaps, one in twelve. Many of these people apparently struggle through life with only a single name – often the name of a small country or city. But the thing that really struck me – and call this a ‘grey-moment’ if you like – is how totally unattractive most of these people are. And I guess I’m talking about the women here, as I no longer try and judge the attractiveness of a man as the results constantly surprise me.

The reason most of these women are unattractive? Two things really. Most seem to feel the need to plaster make-up on as if supplies were running out and are obviously terrified of being seen without it for fear of showing the world the real, sorry state of their bony face. But most significantly, they are all waif-like, stick thin. Horribly, bone-jarringly skeletal. And they boast that they are only 2 stone 8 lbs (non-English people can do their own conversion here) and eat a whole 8 raisins a day. I’m a man – OK, I’m an overweight man but let’s ignore that bit for a minute. Can you imagine getting into bed with a woman like this? Wouldn’t you roll over and wonder why someone left a knobbly bamboo garden stake in your bed? Hang on – it’s got hair! Must be a mop. And is that the sound of bone crunching on bone I hear?

OK – so maybe this is a ‘grey moment’. I’m all for healthy living. Good diet, good exercise, look after your body and your skin. But somehow I don’t believe this is what these people are doing. Stretched skin over bone is neither attractive or healthy and actually makes many of them look older than they are. Hence the make-up I guess. And it seriously alarms me that these fatuous people are held up as role models. Makes me almost glad I don’t have a daughter.