Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
not in their psychological or verbal lexicon. Get your target in your sights and hit the trigger. And if there’s any collateral damage, well, that’s just being straightforward.
So the Duchess of Sussex will see no need to tiptoe around anyone as she goes about her business. What Meghan wants, she will certainly get – just as Harry is reputed to have said.
The sooner we get used to that, the easier it will be all round.
Sexism is giving me a heart attack
A MAN goes into his GP with a pain in his chest and breathlessness. He is sent off for an ECG pronto and will probably be treated for a potential heart attack. A woman goes into her GP suffering from spasms in her abdomen and breathlessness and she is sent home with Gaviscon to treat indigestion. But she may well be having a heart attack too. Coronary heart disease is the greatest killer of women in the UK – we are twice as likely to die from it as from breast cancer – but it is often misdiagnosed because our symptoms are not always the same as those traditionally associated with heart attacks. I learnt this because last week I joined a panel discussion hosted by the British Heart Foundation to launch a campaign to address this issue, and I left resolving to get my blood pressure and cholesterol checked immediately. I also left knowing that, hypochondriac as I am, I will now have added yet another worry to my permanent 3am insomnia list…
Incredible parents did Natasha proud
AS I listened to Nadim and Tanya Ednan-Laperouse – the parents of schoolgirl Natasha who died of an allergic reaction to an unlabelled Pret A Manger baguette – speak of their successful campaign for more rigorous food labelling, my reaction was one of incredulous admiration.
I’m sure that, if something as inconceivably awful happened to a child of mine, I would simply lose the will to do anything, let alone pull myself together and lobby exhaustively to achieve change. But they did just that, electing, as Nadim said, to shed light on what is in the dark.
As a result, they’ve made the world a better and safer place for the children of others.
Want the truth? Ask an older woman
MAUREEN Lipman is completely right to say that Sir Mark Rylance is daft to have left the Royal Shakespeare Company in protest at BP’s sponsorship.
At the rate we’re going, there isn’t going to be an arts institution left in the country, now that so much sponsorship money is coming under such criticism.
And how much do I love Dame Judi Dench for acknowledging that, however creepy and abusive they are alleged to have been, Kevin Spacey put on some great plays at the Old Vic and Harvey Weinstein had a genius for film production?
This is not glossing over their behaviour. It’s simply stating the truth. How refreshing to hear these older actresses speak out. Instead of feeling obliged to join in the tiresome virtue-signalling of the age, they are wise and brave enough to look at the whole picture.
Goop’s left me with mud on my face
BACK in the dark ages when Gwyneth Paltrow launched Goop, I thought I had never heard of anything so silly. And that was just the name.
Now that tickets for this weekend’s annual Goop conference are going for £1,000 a pop and she’s managed to make a 24-carat gold-plated vibrator necklace the West London accessory of the day (yes, really), the last laugh is clearly on me.
How style guru Min broke the code
MIN HOGG, who died last week aged 80, was the founding editor of World Of Interiors.
She was a passionate editor determined her magazine should not follow trends but feature style wherever she found it, from castles to gypsy caravans.
Min had no time for vulgar marketing activities, kicking like mad against having to put anything as commercial as cover lines on her beautiful fronts.
When she was told that the time had come when her magazine’s cover, like every other, would have to include a barcode so sales could be registered, she simply refused for months. Finally she was told there was no option.
So, for the cover of her next issue she chose a room filled with a dense multitude of colours, patterns and elaborate textiles and she hid the barcode in an enormous bookcase, making it almost impossible to find at the checkout.