THE LADY VANISHES

They say you can't be too rich or too thin. I see it the other way. You can't be too fat or too poor. No, really. You just can't.

Last week at the hairdresser I read the latest issue of Heat. Or was it OK? Closer? Spot the difference. The cover, not for the first time, showed a parade of terracotta skeletons with the heading - SHOCK!! Actress eats peanut and chucks it.

Surely not a set-up by some C-lister's publicist?

The hypocrisy of the mags never succeeds to amaze me. But I still get a warm glow from seeing pictures of Ann O'Rexic and her pals and hearing their excuses - I'm small boned. No dear, you're just small brained. And what little you had has already been to the dry cleaners.

I'd hate to be in their Jimmy Choos, because how much fun is it to be constantly judged for the size of your arse, fat or thin? Is there such a thing as the perfect size? In the end it's a lose-lose game for these girls because in the meat market that passes for casting, what chance for a lovely, fresh-faced, healthy young lassie who has a hard enough time getting parts without hearing the words: keep sucking. Or drop a few stone.

I read recently that if sizes keep falling, most of Hollywood's actresses will soon disappear. Because if a 6 is too big, and you drop to a 4 then a 2, say, surely it can't be much harder to be a zero. The sound that zero makes is total silence. A sound like death, without the rattle. Which might be good news for all those British soap actresses we read about who go off to La-La land to try their luck, because - although equally talented I'm sure - they look like wrestlers in comparison to the US competition, so somehow I doubt it's worth the jet-lag.

Shame on a business that thrives on this trash. Because it's hard for a girl to complain about a lack of decent roles when women's magazines are the first to bitch about a patch of cellulite, a sweaty armpit or a stray bra-strap. God forbid you weigh more than a stick of balsa wood. Even no-hopers like crazee Gail Porter have publicly complained about eating nothing but tomatoes. I'd be more worried about the hair, Gail. And as for A-list actresses, those at the top of their game, it's a bigger tragedy. Does Nicole Kidman really need to be a size 6 when she's got about 6 billion in her bank account?

These are women whose careers depend on being permanently ill. Meanwhile the rest of us can't compete. We sit in our offices, in call centres, in shops, lounging in bars and restaurants on our downtime. What place are we in when we want to be these women, at the same time hating them because their lives and looks are better than ours?

Yeah, yeah, I'm sounding like a hairy old dyke. Being thin makes you live longer - so says all the nutritional and health research. But here's the thing - in lots of ways Madonna might be a candidate for Auschwitz the way she's heading - great bod, Madge, you worked for it. Let's face it though - you're crowding 50 and in your latest clip, your heavily-lit and filtered close-up lasts about 12 frames. No doubt created by some tightly briefed, idea-castrated directorbot whose 'radical' choice to put you in an ethnically-exotic video just made you look weird, thin or not.

So give it a rest, girls. Have a plate of chips.