WHEN a teenage Dawn French was going out to a party, her father told the cuddly youngster that she looked really great. Consequently, Dawn believed she did, and despite her curves, bounced cheerfully off to have a good time, a normal life and, grounded in such confidence, went on to great success.

Jenna Franklin, meanwhile, like at least half 15-year-olds everywhere, thinks she's a freak because she has small boobs. And do her parents give her a hug and tell her she looks gorgeous? No, they offer her a breast enlargement for her 16th birthday.

Well, I bet that's done wonders for her self-esteem. If even your own parents admit you're inadequate, then what hope for the rest of the world? In all the debate about smacking, has no one yet realised that there are far worse ways to be cruel to a child?

Jenna wants to be famous. "And I don't think you can be famous without boobs," she says, which must be the saddest condemnation of 21st Century society yet.

Sadder still, she might be almost right. We are a society that increasingly judges people on their looks rather than anything else. Would Anne Widdecombe come in for so much mockery if she were six inches taller, two stone lighter and had a decent hairstyle? Jenna is only 15, she's taking the world as she finds it, as we made it. Before we criticise her attitude, we could ask ourselves what made her think like that.

No doubt Jenna will eventually get her bigger boobs. And if she finds she has no talent and still can't be famous, what does she do then? - get a nose job, have her eyes done, keep having bits of her altered until she's famous if only for that?

You could shake Jenna for her daftness. Even more so, you could shake her parents.

The irony for those of my generation is that many of us actually had big boobs when we were 15. Only those were the days of Twiggy, when flat was fashionable. It only goes to show that you can't win, especially when you're a body-conscious teenager.

There is, however, a sure and certain cure. It's called growing up.

Let's hope Jenna's parents manage it one day.

SOMETIMES, the NHS works brilliantly. My son had a black spot on his face. It was getting ominously bigger and blacker, so on Tuesday we went to the GP.

The very next day, Wednesday, we had a call from the hospital offering us an appointment in two days' time. We went along to Middlesbrough General on Friday, where they took one look and removed the spot there and then, leaving the lad with a neat row of stitches and no worries. What's more, everyone was really nice to him.

That's the NHS as it should be and this time at least, that's just how it was.

THE really depressing aspect of all the money that millionaires are sloshing into Labour party coffers is nothing to do with buying Domes, peerages or even a lot of influence.

It's just that with a General Election coming up, it means that the Labour Party is going to have far too much money to fritter away on a glitzy glossy campaign - posters, leaflets and those carefully spun election broadcasts that have us all running, screaming into the kitchen.

There is to be a cap on election spending. But you know it won't be low enough.

About a tenner each should do it nicely - and bring us all back into the realms of common sense. Then the millionaires can find something useful to do with their money.

IN a bid to defend her friend and herself, Denise Carr sunk her teeth into the groin of wife beater Neil Hutchinson and bit his testicle off.

As a result, this week she was jailed for six months. For self-defence? Hutchinson had her pinned to the floor and was punching her, what was she meant to do? One can only assume that as he decided the sentence, Judge Gerard Harkins was influenced by the tears in his eyes.

FIRST of all Opal Fruits became Starburst, then Marathon bars were renamed - very unpleasantly really - as Snickers. All because this is how they were known in the rest of the world. That's why Oil of Ulay became Oil of Olay and now we have Cif Cream.

And what you may ask is Cif? Well, it's dear old Jif.

In a splendid letter, sent to me by Maureen Brighten of Darlington, the Chairman of Lever Brothers, James Hill assures us that Cif is a "global name" and that by adopting it "we will be able to bring you better value products and more innovations in future".

And to make it worse, Cif has to be pronounced Sif. Got that?

"Daft," says Mrs Brighten, "but I suppose we have to accommodate the rest of the world."

At least Lever Brothers has the excuse of a name known round the world. Not so the Post Office. That's pretty universal too. La Poste, Postamt, Posta - even foreigners would recognise what a Post Office was. So that's why, in a move of monumental pointlessness, they're changing the name to Consignia. Consignia? Somewhere where you consign things, apparently. To dust? To oblivion?

The incredibly silly name change has cost a fortune - which could far more usefully have been spent helping struggling rural post offices and will achieve absolutely nothing but confusion.

Ah well. I'm off down the Consignia. Back in a Cif...

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