The model's dietitian – Kate Moss. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
I recently read that the "model diet" consists of "coffee, vodka, cigarettes and champagne". Is this true?
L Butler, London
According to the magazines that have reported that this is what Kate Moss told her dear friend Lily Allen, yes, and, as I've always said, if you can't trust a celebrity magazine, you can't trust anything.
But even leaving that aside, is this really what models eat? Well, probably. Most of them. Some of the time. Models are thin. Most will be genetically predisposed to this body type but, even then, most of them have to struggle with the increasingly ridiculous standards of what constitutes as acceptably thin in the eyes of Karl Lagerfeld. But hey, guess what? If you don't eat, you die. And even if you don't eat for a short time, you won't have any energy, not even to walk up and down a catwalk. And most importantly of all, if you follow that model diet, your skin is going to look like hell. Seriously – like hell. There may even be spots of flame jumping up and down between your ravaged, oil-deprived creases when you have one fag too many, and no amount of Botox can disguise that.
That great philosopher of our time Jerry Hall once wisely said that, at a certain point, a woman needs to choose between her face and her ass. (Just for clarity, Jerry is, of course, American so she was referring to her bottom as opposed to her donkey. Just making sure everyone is on board here.) This means, you can either not eat very much and have a shrivelled face and a bony bottom. Or you can eat more and have a fuller face and a pleasingly rounded bottom. It's a tricky choice, I'll give you that. And I'll leave you with one final thought: no one ever lay on their deathbed and thought, "Damn, what a waste of a life. If only I'd been a size zero." Believe.
I recently saw a watch advert featuring Zara-flipping-Phillips. Are you kidding me?!
James, Manchester
No, James, I am not. Zara Phillips is the perfect embodiment of "competitive spirit meet[ing] grace and beauty" that this watch-whose-name-we-shall-not-mention (WWNWSNM) represents. She is a modern woman and modern women need to know what time it is in order to be super modern and – and – and . . .
I'm sorry, I can't keep this up any more. I tried, Your Maj, I honestly tried. If that axe must fall on my neck now, then fall it must. Zara Phillips is indeed advertising a daft watch. Now, as royals go, Zara is not bad. She does, for example, do things, even if those things are horse jumping but, hey, she's a royal, I don't think many people expected her to grow up and find a cure for cancer. In fact, I'm not disgusted with the WWNWSNM for asking her to be in their advert; I'm disgusted with her for accepting.
You know, I can understand appearing in an advert if, say, you are a struggling actor and you are down to a mere £27 in your bank account and the landlord is threatening to throw you out of your flat and your agent is no longer answering your calls and you just found out that you are pregnant. Then, fair enough, put on your brightest smile and pose for that Specsavers poster.
If, however, you are a multimillionaire actor or member of the royal family, then no. No, no, no and a thousand times no. Advertising is about lying. And it is about selling lies to your fellow human beings. I accept it as a necessary part of most businesses – newspapers, come to think of it – but anyone who appears in them, lounging in an armchair and sipping on some crappy coffee (oh, McNulty, what would Bunk say?) when they are not on the breadline, or even in the same universe as the breadline, then these people need to take a very long and hard look at their pathetic little lives.
One of the interesting upshots to celebrities taking over the fashion world – like lots and lots of shorter-than-you-think Godzillas taking over Tokyo – is seeing which celebrities are just celebrities, and which ones are the real attention-seeking, money-grabbing lame-os. You may or may not be surprised to know that Sienna Miller, for example, advertises various fashion labels. Endless men who either have been or would like to be James Bond advertise watches. These people all have gabajillions of pounds in the bank. Did they really need that extra £300,000 to pose like a prat with a watch? You can get depressed about this, or you can see it as a wheat-from-chaff exercise and know who you should push forward to the precipice when the apocalypse approaches •
Ref: guardian.co.uk
