AS a rather greedy woman who can eat most men under the table, especially if we are dealing in puddings, I have always been contemptuous of the girly tide of compulsive dieters around me.

I am embarrassed by women who shy away from eating a hearty meal because they're "not allowed" to. Weight Watchers or Slimming World or the Moonies have won their hearts, bodies and minds, and sadly they look no thinner for it.

Yet, I find myself defending the Atkins diet as it comes under attack - once again. This time, nutritional experts have undertaken a study into the high-fat and protein, low-carb diet and have decided that it is based on "pseudo science".

So does this mean that the "red days" and "green days" of Slimming World or the "sinful points" of Weight Watchers are founded on more scientific data, or are we just getting at poor Dr Atkins?

Any diet that tells you to go ahead and have that fry-up and to eat cream and cheese until the cows come home is not to be dismissed lightly.

Here is a man who is liberating womankind from a life-time of terrible-tasting, low-fat faddish foods. How dare we berate him?

Some have expressed concern over long-term damage to the arteries, but what about the long-term damage to women's morale that low-fat diets have, especially when many find it impossible to keep to such severe calorie restrictions.

I take my hat off to the doctor and I raise my enormous cheese plate as a toast to his genius.

YOU can tell a bright young thing from a 30-something single woman by the amount of television they watch.

Like everyone in their early 20s, I left university with a virulent TV habit. I got up to Richard and Judy in the golden era of This Morning, when Richard would give you his heartfelt opinion on period pains and M&S bras.

Me and the gilded youth around me would watch a slurry of TV quizzes, soaps and kitchen sink dramas. We couldn't afford to do much after we had sunk our beer money over the weekend and anyhow, being in for Top of the Pops, The Chart Show, The Word, The Tube, and any other funky old music show was a must in between manic bouts of clubbing and sleeping.

Only last week, as I was sitting next to a gang of bright-eyed students on the train, I realised how far off the youth-o-meter I had come.

They were recounting the plot-lines of programmes that were probably today's cult viewing and which I never would have missed a half decade ago. But things have changed and these days I am too busy going to bijou wine-bars and Moroccan restaurants to zone out in front of the telly.

Maybe it is a sad reflection of my raging age-denial, but I felt sick at not having switched onto Scrubs, followed by Six Feet Under, followed by Dawson's Creek, followed by Spooks.

For me, only Sex And The City is worth taping, and that's only to get some tips off the girls.

I realise now that the funky young party is well and truly over for me as I dribble into middle-age with trips to art galleries and theatres with my well-dressed friends. When did this transformation take place?