THE country’s in turmoil. Europe’s in turmoil. The weather’s appalling and the football team’s rubbish. And a dentist wants to ban the cake run.

Is he mad? Cake is one of the few consolations left to us. The dentist, Professor Nigel Hunt, was criticising the office “cake culture”. Buying cakes on birthdays or bringing back sweet treats from holidays is damaging workers’ teeth and expanding their waistlines, he says. But what about their general happiness?

He even wants biscuits banned at meetings. Look, very often the only point in going to extremely tedious meetings was to get your hands on as many of those crunchy pink wafers you could sneak under your agenda paper and just hoping you didn’t have a mouthful of crumbs when called upon to speak.

Fruit, nuts or chunks of cheese – the professor’s preferred option – while delicious in their way and on other occasions, just wouldn’t be the same. I’m not a terrific cake eater or baker. But a recent rainy Cornish afternoon was vastly cheered by scones with clotted cream and a chunk of saffron cake. Bliss.

After all the encircling gloom and chaos of last weekend, I made an extravagant cheese cake. As I mixed biscuits into a rich warm pool of melted butter, whipped up full fat cheese, cream and sugar and about five tons of strawberries, I refused to think about the calories and instead concentrated on the comfort.

Cake isn’t just cake or a sweet treat. It takes us back to childhood and baking days, warm kitchens , safety and security, recipes that Granny made or Mum bought from the shop. Either way, it’s a good feeling. In workaday offices, cake is a small shared happiness, as good as a team-building exercise without having to go over obstacle courses in the mud.

Empires rise and fall. Politicians come and go. Relationships falter. Footballers invariably disappoint.

But cake goes on for ever. An eternal force for good – whatever the dentist says.

SO after their pathetic performance on Monday night, the pampered prima donnas of England football team flew back from France on a specially-chartered plane and were then met at the airport by chauffeur-driven cars to take them home. Lucky them.

Frankly, I’d have made them queue at check in, travel with everyone else and then get a bus and serve them right. Meanwhile, the fans who’d paid a lot of money and given up their holidays – not to mention their dreams – to follow them were stranded in France because of transport strikes, with more than 200 cancelled flights and no idea how they would get back.

Maybe the England team on their ridiculous wages (How on earth does Wayne Rooney get £300,000 a week?) thought of chartering a plane or two for their long-suffering fans. There again, maybe they didn’t.

TAMARA Ecclestone celebrated her 32nd birthday with a pyjama party at the Dorchester. The way you do. Funnily enough she looked more dressed up in her pjs than in the tiny dress she wore out to lunch later.

Her husband, Jay, covered the floors of their house with a snow storm of rose petals. Wonderful, romantic. Looked beautiful.

And the sort of thing you can only do when you know you’re not going to be the one who’ll to have to clean them all up later…

DOES the sight of yourself in a changing room mirror stop you buying that dress? All too often, yes. Thank goodness.

A dress might look great on the model but can somehow magically change you into something weirdly unappealing. Or once, unforgettably into resembling Christopher Biggins as a pantomime dame. Arrggh. Luckily I realised before I bought it and went out in public.

But now one fashion chain has come up with a wizard wheeze – they’re getting rid of mirror s in changing rooms. Instead, you’re going to have to rely on the word of the assistant/your friend/mum/man to give you an honest assessment.

Ha! Like that’s going to work…

Here’s a tip to clothes shops – keep the mirrors, improve the lighting, give us more space an plenty of hooks for our own clothes. Above all, get your sizes sorted – then we wouldn’t have to try so many on in the first place.

PRINCE Harry is in danger of becoming a national treasure. As at the Coldplay concert in his back garden this week – the first ever concert in Kensington Palace. It was all in aid of his charity Sentebale and there he was up on stage, mic in hand, singing along with Chris Martin looking totally at home.

Well done too to his cousins Beatrice and Eugenie who turned up in the rain to support him. Unlike his father and uncles who seem permanently starched and unbending at the slightest hint of informality – and even his big brother has a definite dignity clause- Harry doesn’t mind making a fool of himself. Consequently, he rarely looks daft at all.

OK, so Marcus Willis lost in straight sets to Roger Federer. That’s no surprise.

But Willis, 772 in the world rankings, clearly had a great time on Centre Court and although well beaten, was by no means totally humiliated by the seven times champion. The crowd was wild, Roger Federer was generous and gracious in his praise. And Marcus Willis had fun.

In the world of professional sport where everything is so often so grim and soul-less, didn’t that just make a refreshing change?

COLLECTING the elder grand-daughter from nursery on Tuesday I drove over a torn England flag lying abandoned in a puddle in the gutter outside the pub. Said it all, really.