'MY baby trauma: New mum Gaby's heartbreak'. Reading the headlines this week, you could be forgiven for assuming TV presenter Gaby Roslin had suffered a miscarriage or even lost her child.

But no, the 38-year-old BBC star says the first months of her baby's life were fraught because she - horror of all horrors - couldn't breast-feed.

Gaby, clearly a devoted mother to her baby daughter Libbi-Jack, says she was made to feel a failure by fanatical breast-feeding bullies at her ante-natal group. These are the sort of tyrants who talk about formula milk as if it were poison.

We all know mother's milk is best for babies, and it is right to praise those who feed their babies themselves. But many can't breast-feed - for a whole host of reasons - and bottle feeding is not exactly an easy option either. New mums are doing an important and demanding job. None of us are perfect, most of us feel inadequate a lot of the time. In these early, difficult weeks, when we are tired and fraught, we need constant support, not criticism. And a little bit of sympathy when things don't go quite according to plan would help.

COMEDIAN Paul Merton's wife, who is suffering from breast cancer, has a message for other women in the same position: "You're still alive so stop worrying about trivial things, forgive the people who used to annoy you. Embrace life." They are wise words and make the rest of us, who are healthy and strong, feel guilty and self-centred for worrying about little things that are of no consequence in the context of life and death.

Every so often something happens - perhaps the death or illness of someone close - to remind us of this and we resolve never to worry or whinge about little things again. But before long, we are complaining about our weight, having a bad hair day and the idiot who stole our parking space.

But isn't this an affirmation of life and normality? We can only afford to get worked up about little niggles because we are lucky enough not to have such a huge, looming fear overshadowing everything else. I hope Paul Merton's wife makes a full and speedy recovery and soon enjoys the luxury of getting worked up over things like missing socks and repair men who keep her waiting. Because, I suspect, that is when she will start to feel truly normal, and better, again.

ISN'T the most staggering fact to emerge from the Major-Currie affair that there are people prepared to pay more than £25,000 just to hear John Major speak?

LORD Archer clearly considers himself too posh for prison. "I'm told to stand under a light and strip. I take off my jacket, shirt and House of Commons cufflinks. 'Aquascutum and Yves St Laurent', says the officer as another writes it down." In his diaries, he comes across as an outside observer rather than a conman who has committed perjury and is doing time like the rest of them. Meanwhile, his sanctimonious wife Mary makes out he is doing society a favour by reporting on conditions inside. Since the book will make them £300,000 richer by Christmas, the only message this self-serving pair is sending out to society is that crime pays.