Julie Burchill
Here in Barcelona, it's the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are the objects of admiration - not a bunch of half-witted monarchs.
As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.
I almost choke on my popcorn when I hear film stars, who walk on red carpets as much as the rest of us do on zebra crossings, criticising youngsters who crave fame.
In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist - as opposed to the U.K., where the Queen is probably the best-known animal, vegetable and/or mineral going when it comes to overseas visitors.
It is also interesting to note that the original supermodels are now making a comeback after being dismissed in the Nineties as being 'greedy' by a gaggle of male designers who lived like Sun Kings.
Gluttony and idleness are two of life's great joys, but they are not honourable.
Blakes Hotel in South Kensington was a particular favourite of mine during what I affectionately think of as my Restless Years.
Make no mistake, most women are well aware that they've never had it so good; when they enter a spa or salon, it is purely a hair/nails thing, a prelude to an evening of guilt-free fun.
What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?
Can I just say here how much I hate the word 'pamper'? While pretending to celebrate and indulge women, it actually implies that their bodies are so revolting that even their 'me time' must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if potential suitors are to be prevented from running screaming in horror.
When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?
Lots of women love to accuse men of being immature when the fellow in question displays a reluctance to 'commit.'
The secret is not to care what anyone thinks of you.
The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact.
Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.
Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a little man.
A good part - and definitely the most fun part - of being a feminist is about frightening men.
A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be and the most pleasurable to have and to hold.
As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.
Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth... suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
From paying off friends' tax bills to rescuing stray dogs and stuffing £20 notes into the hands of homeless people, I can't get rid of my money fast enough.
Because I was an only, I had more things, and I remember early on the kick I got from giving stuff away. Despite all the myths about only children not being able to share, actually I've never knowingly met a stingy one.
A therapist might suggest my generosity is a way of buying affection. But buying people's love has never been an issue for me. Generally speaking, I don't want their love.
I just have a real problem with people who seek to portray fatness or thinness as moral concepts.
Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).
There are exciting, intelligent, fat people - and exciting, intelligent, thin people.
As a militant troublemaker, I once wrote that it was the duty of every woman worthy of the description to upset men at least three times a day, on principle.
When a man wants to relax, he will slob out and really relax. Or he will pursue a hobby - anything from building models to watching sport.
Women, more often than not, do things which aren't remotely relaxing but are all about preening, which is just another sort of work.
Having 'best friends' is - at least for me - as outdated and small-minded a concept as the idea of 'Sunday best clothes.'
To believe that one, or even three, mates can supply all the things one needs from one's friends is as stupid as believing married couples must do everything together.
As I have got older, I have found myself making friends with the ease and swiftness that other people pick up fuzzballs on their jumpers. And I believe it is probably my lack of longing for 'The One' that makes me so popular.
The latest twist on the pampering concept is spa parties, where a group of friends take over an entire spa.
There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.
Grooming oneself with all the crazed compulsion of an under-exercised lab rat in order to hook a rich man and obtain a lush lifestyle makes a certain (albeit seedy) sense.
The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it; most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.
What I find most upsetting about this new all-consuming beauty culture is that the obsession with good looks, and how you can supposedly attain them, is almost entirely female-driven.
But just think what a boring, bread-and-milk world this would be without the boastful.
The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps.
Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.
Shame, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.
I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?
It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England.
I am not one of those fat birds who feels miserable because models are thin. Frankly, I feel more insulted by the idea that unless I see other fat birds in fashion magazines, I will be reduced to a sniveling wreck of a human being.
I'll declare my own interest right here at the start and admit that, like the vast majority of people, I find youthful looks appealing.
People often yearn back to more innocent times, but more and more, as I get older, I find myself hankering after more jaded days.
Monarchists frequently declare that without the royal family, Britain would be 'nothing.' What a woeful lack of love for one's country such statements express.
Being a monarchist, and fawning over those 'above' you, you must naturally despise those 'below' or on the same socioeconomic level as yourself, because that is how hierarchy worship works.
Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.Collection: Writing