TEENAGERS with perfect skin are sloshing on gallons of unnecessary face cream... others ask for cosmetic surgery for their 18th birthdays... and now five-year-olds think they have to be slim to be popular.

And it's all our fault. Five-year-olds, with their chubby arms and round tummies, are just perfect, but according to a new Australian study, they are already feeling pressure to be a different sort of perfect. The wrong sort of perfect.

Which means they've been eavesdropping on the conversations - and dissatisfaction - of their mothers, aunties, big sisters.

And come on, admit it, we're all the same, equally insecure.

Former Mirror editor Piers Morgan's memories have been intriguing, not for the big things, but the small details.

Among the little gems is Princess Diana's anger with him. Considering all the things that were said about the princess in the years before her death, you'd think she'd have plenty of bones to pick with a red top editor.

And what riled her most? - the fact that he'd printed a picture showing her cellulite. Accusations of infidelity, instability or being downright devious didn't matter. But orange peel thighs...

Cherie Blair was no better. Here we have one of the brightest brains in Britain, someone who can make mincemeat of the opposition in a court. And when she met Piers Morgan she too had a score to settle... the fact that he said she had rotten skin.

Apparently she has good, youthful skin and is very proud of it. So for all the attacks on her husband, his policies, her Labour beliefs, that she could have defended, she worried that her complexion had been maligned.

We all have our vanities. But if even the most powerful and intelligent women can prove themselves so ridiculously vulnerable, what hope is there for the average adolescent, already a blob of uncertainties and insecurities. And as for five-year-olds...

Of course, I'd like to think that I'm above such foolishness. Unfortunately, the photo on the top of this page is quite old. Yes, I'm definitely going to have a new one taken. When I have a good day.

A NEW £1m marketing campaign to tempt women to drink beer is adding to pints and halves with "female friendly thirds" - a third of a pint served in sophisticated wine glasses rather than anything as macho as a beer glass.

Back in the 1970s I seem to remember feminists campaigners suing pubs who insisted on giving them a "lady's glass" - and demanding their right to stand at the bar and sup from pint pots.

How times change...

REMEMBER blue bags? We were talking about them a few weeks ago, which prompted Jean Gabriel to write from Masham and send me one Edge's Dolly Blue bags, "for gleaming whites on washday".

"Shake Dolly Blue in the final rinsing water. Only a pale solution is required," say the instructions.

I think we used Reckitt's Blue in our house, but Jean's father was a commercial traveller for Edges, which is why she still had some of theirs. But she must have had them a long time - the one she sent me cost tuppence ha'penny. In Old Money.

"My mum used to use the blue bag for putting on bee stings. I keep one on my kitchen window sill for that purpose," wrote Jean.

Ah yes, before the days of magic lotions and potions and expensive sprays, first aid was simpler "Blue bag for bees; vinegar for wasps."

Worked a treat. I shall keep my blue bag handy, just in case.

YES thank you...cough cough, wheeze... the pneumonia's much better. Gosh, I can almost breathe. How DID we manage before antibiotics? But thank you for cards and emails. Very kind.

Unfortunately, I managed to get ill just after my GP's surgery had closed down for the weekend and so ended up at the out-of-hours clinic in Darlington Memorial Hospital. This clearly just works out of available space that would not otherwise be used at weekends. Very practical.

All the same, it was a bit disconcerting for husband and myself, well into our 50s, to find ourselves waiting in the Ante-Natal Clinic.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/news/griffiths.html

Published: ??/??/2004