SCHOOL photographs are dire. That’s the point of them. Imagine looking back at yourself at five years old, or ten or fifteen, and thinking you would never ever look that good again. Grim. Self-esteem down the plughole straightaway.

However bad you might look now, you’ll never again look quite that ridiculous. Or that spotty. Or that hopeless. Or, in the case of Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch, ridiculously pompous.

Even Princess Diana and the Duchess of Cambridge had their lumpen, gawky moments. It’s part of growing up.

But now school photographers are offering to airbrush children’s photographs, giving parents the option to Photoshop the image, cover up the spots, tidy up the hair and goodness knows what else besides. In other words, parents will be telling their children “You’re not good enough!”

Well, thanks Mum. My school photos were so long ago as to be museum pieces. From my buttoned-up hand-knitted cardigan and unbrushed hair clearly chopped in the kitchen by mother, to the surreptitious fifth form make up and hippy, drippy hair above my half-mast tie. Total poser.

My sons’ pics are hidden deep in a drawer. They show a fine array of chubby cheeks, toothless grins and cascading curls through to spots, sulky expressions and hair struggling under half a ton of gel. They never allowed me to put the photos on show. I kept them only for blackmail purposes, in case they brought home a girl I didn’t like.

In America, of course, they’ve taken things further. In some schools, photographers arrive complete with a mobile beauty counter and make-up artists. No pressure there then…

When both boys and girls are under so much pressure to look perfect all the time, when they’re bombarded with images that make them feel inadequate, you could wonder what on earth those schools are thinking of.

We don’t need perfection. Their very awfulness make school photos wonderful, so natural and innocent, even with spots and bad haircuts. No wonder parents treasure them.

Even so, now when most children are photographed incessantly from the moment of their birth – literally - you could wonder why the school photograph persists. But while they do, perhaps should be encouraging children to accept themselves – and everyone else - to be happy in their own skin, as they are. After all, things can only get better…

THE Duchess of Cornwall wore one of her favourite coats to a public engagement near Balmoral last week and was hailed in a Scottish newspaper as “Camilla, the Duchess of recycling”.

Well no. She bought a coat. She likes it. She wears it more than once. It’s what clothes are for.

What next? Blaming the Queen for that same old crown that comes out on every state occasion?

BREAKFAST is booming. Forget lunch or dinner, breakfast is the new social occasion.

We spend £80million a year on eating breakfast away from home, which won’t go far if you eat too often at the Feversham Arms in Helmsley, named this week as home of the most expensive breakfast in the country. Duck eggs, caviar and Norwegian smoked salmon costs £120

Just think how many bacon sandwiches that could buy you somewhere else….

I wouldn’t wish it on anyone to be tied up and robbed by armed gunman breaking into your home. But every cloud…

Kim Kardashian was recently tied up and robbed in Paris. She is famous for, well, being famous. It all started with a sex tape and twerked on through an endless round of showing off all her assets, natural, manmade and bought as she flaunts her body and her blingy lifestyle on every available outlet.

She’s obviously a canny businesswoman but apart from that she is an appalling role model to the millions of daft young impressionable girls who follow her on Twitter and Instagram and desperately crave her lifestyle.

No longer. In the wake of the robbery, Kim Kardashian is hiding in obscurity. She has, says a spokesman, “no desire to return to her old life.”

It probably won’t last, but what a blessed relief while it does.