I was backstage at the Victoria’s Secret show — it was eye-opening

When I was about 25, I realised — with the clarity of a lightning bolt — that I was not a celebrity. I do not mean I had hitherto self-identified as Kate Moss, but rather that I registered — at last — that no one would ever try to “pap me” in a bikini on a far-flung beach, and so I did not need to prepare for five days on the Costa del Sol with the fervour of an Olympian. The prescriptive standards to which we persist, unfairly, to hold public women did not apply; liberation was sweet.

With advanced age came perspective. Besides being incomparably genetically blessed, these women, I realised — at last — treated their bodies as livelihoods, devoting forensic discipline and thousands upon thousands of pounds to their upkeep. In other words, I become more rational and less superficial.

So much for wisdom. Last week I was in New York for the Victoria’s Secret show, a flamboyant, hyperpageant in which a parade of Amazonians stomps down a metallic catwalk wearing (very) smalls encrusted with sequins, many of them paid millions of dollars to do so. The crystals blinded. There were buttocks everywhere; body hair was nowhere to be seen.

Despite my hard-won perspective, after an hour of close-range exposure to these thoroughbreds I felt like a homely mule bound for the glue factory. Backstage, I stood slack-jawed (their skin! So poreless!); later on I squinted into the mirror, ignoring the russet trees in Central Park outside, bemoaning my very present pores.

But navel-gazing aside, my real impression was that a theatrical cavalcade of women in their pants, tied up with bows, felt wildly inconsistent with a current mood championing realism and body diversity, and that while the Amazonians might be women, this wasn’t a performance for women at all.

Fancy another peek at Pokémon, dad?

News of the new Pokémon movie makes me nostalgic. I think that of all the things I have made my father endure, taking me to the Pokémon movie — I was eight — was the most testing. Worse than the histrionics of my mid-teens and the ferocious sullenness of 2006-2008. Worse even than the financial calamities of my early twenties, a period referred to by my mother as my extensive, interest-free “loan”.

My dad — who sat through countless vacuous animations in the name of fatherhood — loathed the film so much that he couldn’t even pretend. I’ve suggested we revisit it at Christmas ahead of the new one.

Don’t blame Beyoncé in Green debacle

Beyoncé has reportedly ended her working relationship with Arcadia’s Philip Green . She is buying back his share in Ivy Park, the sportswear brand she launched with Topshop in 2016, for an undisclosed fee.

Beyoncé is a one-woman mega-brand (estimated worth £258 million), a woman for whom a clothing line is essentially an extracurricular activity. Amid all the the Green furore, she was singled out: many commentators — especially women — were disappointed the singer hadn’t called it quits with him.

Saying that, when it comes to Topshop, friends are divided. Some separate the man from the brand; other hardliners think a boycott of the shop is necessary. I fall into the former camp: a boycott damages people — many of them women — who work there, far more than it does Green.

Ultimately, it’s not fair to misdirect direct fury at Beyoncé. Though there is a particular pleasure in watching all Green’s famous friends abandon him.

Life in the Paris fast lane is heading here

After a seven-hour pit-stop in London, most of it spent fast asleep, I got up on Saturday to get the Eurostar to Paris.

In name, this was a trip to visit two expat friends. In practice, however, it was a reconnaissance mission — I wanted to know everything about the Lime electric scooters that have taken over the city. Rumour has it that London is next, regulation and legislation permitting.

Notes from my mission include: they’re everywhere, they’re faster than they look, they’re the favoured way to get home from a club at 4am, and it’s very easy to fall off them. Merde!