In which I discover a bit of rough is actually quickly tricky to catch - even with a Greggs pasty

The North is a cruel mistress. As I sit here the wind has whipped through the wings of its famous steel angel and is currently ripping into my skin.
I am awaiting a date, who is very late.
It was my editor who suggested a trip North would be a good chance to inject some excitement into my column - apparently she was bored of paying thousands of pounds for copy based around my pets. Dear readers, I know, she knows nothing about writing an internationally popular column with countless females relying on my every word.
But still, I thought North London, great. A couple of nights in my fav five star boutique hotel, The Draycott, some meals in some of the chicest restaurants and a chance to stock up on some antiques from South Ken. It took a couple of emails to realise she meant the North of England, and a couple more for me locate it on the map. This is a place where people are banished in Jane Austen novels (Mr Whickham and Lydia, anyone?), a place where the woman discard coats because their skin, so radioactively orange, actually keeps them warm. And Ed wanted me to find love in this desolate backwater? I know I have succumbed to poorer and intellectually inferior lovers in the past - it befits my nurturing and patronising nature - but I was unconvinced.
Then dear reader I was offered a bonus and as quickly as my Yoga teacher, pet psychic and I could pack our bags we were off. Faust might have only sold his soul once but I find you can get more use out of it if you break it up into tiny little pieces and auction it off stage by stage.
So, I won’t go into the whole embarrassing discussion about how this date was set up, but suffice to say I didn’t fully understand my first conversation with my new gardener and I somehow agreed to a drink with his twice-divorced brother.
I have been told he is a looker because he has his own teeth and is a bit of a traveller - he spent time in Leeds and went to London once to see We Will Rock You because he is a big Queen fan.
I, truthfully told, am not holding out much hope but am taking solace in the fact that alcohol is much cheaper in Newcastle and seems to be served automatically in double measures.
Well, readers, I have been here an hour now. Waiting. I miss my cats, at least they seem excited to see me, well, when I bring them their dinner. It's humiliating sitting waiting in a bar where you can’t understand the language and I do not like the women in this town. While I reapplied my Crème de la Mer moisturiser at the bar, one girl asked me for a scoop of it. I told her no and that it was a very expensive face cream made with sea kelp. At that she sneered at me and said she could get all the seaweed she wanted for free from the beach at South Shields. I’m not sure I can deal with this level of backwardness. I’ve never seen so many pasty shops and yesterday I passed two children who were called Greggs….oh for the cute deli at the end of my street and people with refinement and a reading age over 6.
As I was musing over my lot, a hairy paw grabbed my shoulder, crushing my white silk t-shirt, “Al reet, pet,” he bellowed at me (NB. Ed was forced to hire a Geordie translator for this). This beast of a Northern man, stood in front of me. I was trying to drum up some Heathcliff fantasies with an ill-educated but passionate man and I was coming to terms with the fact that I could maybe grow to love a Newcastle football shirt as acceptable evening dress, when he looked me up and down, grabbed a pint from the bar, downed it and left.
So I waited for hours and then was snubbed by a tubby, hairy Neanderthal with barely a word of explanation flung in my direction. If this is the type of terrible behaviour I can expect from Northern men and if this feeling of worthlessness it gives me as a woman can prevail, then Readers, I think I might be in love.
Next week: I venture onto the nightclub that is actually a boat and threaten to remove a thermal layer to fit in

In which Christmas excess leads to a spell under the knife

It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid. So sang my good friends Sir Bob and Sting, who have actually been rather quiet of late. I bet that postman’s been stealing my cards and party invitations again.But there is a need to be afraid, Christmas is the time every woman fears, single or not, because of those sneaky calories that manage to find their way into the most innocent of snacks from champagne and caviar blinis to those moreish cakes in the Iceland platter (now, now don’t sneer, we’ve all had to make some cutbacks with the recession and it’s good the money was going to the Jason Donovan career memorial fund).
This morning I got up before dawn so the neighbours, and the fox that has adopted me, couldn’t see and put on my new Christmas coat made with the skin of 100 baby Emperor penguins and the salty tears of a few Eskimo orphans – who really are beating the Chinese with their workmanship. After taking a sip from the cat’s bowl – Fiji water seems to taste better when you lap it up – I walked out of the house into the bathroom I converted from an outdoor barn. Some of the locals have called my haven an outdoor loo, but that is just the kind of uncultured remark I expect from the Northerners that I now find myself amongst. Ignoring the world around me I gingerly slipped off my designer cardigan and £300 tights and stepped onto the scales. My dear readers the shock I got was too much for my little bird legs to take and I collapsed to the floor. After a few hours I regained consciousness and discovered Christabelle my pet iguana was stuck to my face. Bless her, she had tried to revive me with her tongue and got stuck. I suppose this is why the vet warned me against trying to domesticate her.
Back in the safety of my home, I flicked through my contacts book trying to find someone who might pick up the phone. So many of my friends have seemingly disappeared, all lost in their selfish lives of raising families, looking after elderly parents, nursing themselves through chemo. I’ve told a couple of them to their face what I think of their abandonment, the rest had to read it in a recent article for a glossy magazine, which I must say paid handsomely. So I called the only number on my speed dial that I knew would answer, and readers I do not mind telling you I was appalled with the response. Apparently the Samaritans have got high and lofty all of a sudden and the young lady on the phone was terribly rude to me and told me that having to drop one pound in weight was not enough of a disaster to waste their time.
Well, I would have told her what I thought of her if she hadn’t hung up and then barred my number from their switch board, BUT, having to lose a pound is an absolute travesty for a woman like me. I am known for my skeletal frame and face that is hard to put an age to. I am an icon for females across the world. A feminist who has single-handedly raised the sisterhood out of the dark ages, and done it while wrapped only in a swathe of cashmere and a slick of Crème de la Mer lipbalm. Plus it is very hard to lose something when you don’t know how you gained it in the first place. I am usually very rigid with my diet, so was finding it very tricky to know what to cut back on, when I remembered an intimate interview I had with one of the leading footballer’s wives. I won’t name drop but she let me in on a little secret to drop a few pounds – an appendectomy.Who really needs an appendix, luckily mine was never whipped out on an NHS whim and I could put it to good use by dropping it and some weight. The celebrity medical community is always looking for easy quick fixes and have come upon this wonderful elective surgery. It is so much more sensible than cutting down to one carrot a day for 7 weeks and exercising myself into the ground. So I am booked in on Monday, I have put Mindy the Labrador in charge of the rest of the animals as she is always the most sensible and when you next seem me I will be less one physical pound and only 1,500 pounds lighter in the monetary sense. A triumph for modern technology and a world full of more money than sense.

Next week: What did Princess Diana really say to me in a dream and my quest to pass on that message to her dear boys

In which I lose a dear friend and ruin a Marc Jacobs’ sweater

I’ve been crying today. Not for all the usual reasons – a stray grey hair; how my withered hands clash with my £600 white shirts; the length of waiting lists at Hermes and my sudden slip from prime position; the suffering of donkeys; the children in Darfur (Note to self: must check with darling George and dear Angelina that it’s still Darfur, heaven forefend I get that wrong).No my dear readers, my beloved Spiffy has died. I am in such a funk I could only manage 20 minutes of my morning moisturising ritual and I haven’t even body brushed for 24 hours. I can’t let people see me like this, in fact it is as much as I can do to write all my feelings down in excruciating detail to keep my editors happy and the pay cheque rolling in.For those who don’t know about Spiffy, let me tell you about him. I might have a ultra glamorous job combined with a very messy but ultimately profitable private life, but my pets are my true friends. Some might say my only friends. When I was a child I dreamt of being Dr Doolittle and as I have grown up I have managed to capture, or should I say adopt, many animals that have shared my 10-bedroom, minimalistically-decorated, humble abode nestled in the heart of A-list London.I love animals, they are loyal, never leave you, never cheat and mine are always there, happy to listen to me talk about myself as I nibble on my daily diet of six blanched almonds. They never judge.Spiffy was the best of the bunch. Some people might say that a hamster is a nothing pet, but they just hadn’t met Spiffy. He was an inspiration to me after my first husband (aka Significant Ass-Wipe Other: The First) left me for an actress – and for that ladies and gentleman read once played an asthmatic stripper in Holby City and now spends most of her time making lattes in Notting Hill. Anyway, I digress.I decided to get Spiffy after reading about how Madonna had welcomed a host of Mongolian hamsters into her family and got them blessed at a special Kabbalah party. For me that was too showy, but it did get me thinking that hamsters are the perfect pet.Small enough to fit in your handbag, they come in such cute colours – as long as you don’t get the ginger ones – and they are so soft. Spiffy was always good when I cried. Some people have said I do that a lot, the crying I mean, but I find four “me” cries a day is a great way to get rid of excess water that causes such unsightly bloating. I mean the alternative is eating one of those yoghurts that the middle classes are always advertising and that is just not me. But when I cried, Spiffy always knew what to do. I would pick him up and sob into his fluffy coat. He would happily soak up my tears, I knew he loved it because his little legs would be kicking with joy. It gave him such pleasure to comfort me.For three years we lived like this. Dates I would bring home thought it was strange that Spiffy had a diamond-encrusted cage specially commissioned from Harrods and that I would give him treats of foie gras every Sunday, but they were wrong.Then last Sunday, just after nibbling on his dinner – he always left the parsley on the side of the plate – and just as I was in full swing re-reading the emails between SAWO: The First and his acting barista outloud, Spiffy started to race around the floor as if looking for an escape. But he couldn’t have been doing that. I thought like one those dogs in Hollywood movies he was trying to tell me of incoming danger. I caught up to him crying “Spiffy, Spiffy? What is it my love? Come back here, sit down and relax next to me, we’re only up to the reaction to the second date.”But Spiffy wouldn’t be told, always protecting me to the last he started banging his head against the skirting boards. It was the third thump that did it and he fell, taking his last breath.Reader, I wailed, I stopped to remove my cute grey cashmere ballet-style cardigan, personally designed for me by Marc Jacobs and wrapped Spiffy in it.The world is a lesser place without him, and only now I feel ready enough to exfoliate and book in for my weekly spa session . He would want it this way.

NEXT WEEK: Find out how Madonna’s comforting words helped ease my pain, how Spiffy’s state funeral went, but, witness my grief-filled pig-out at the wake – four salted almonds and a piece of steamed pak choi. The shame