Diary – 17 March 2016

To while away the time at airports, I like to spot celebrities. But pickings have been slim. Where is everyone? On Saturday morning the only face I see is ex-Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, guiltily bolting a free bacon roll in the BA executive lounge at Heathrow. Check your privilege, Jim! To be fair, he was wearing a tracksuit, so I guess that’s OK.

Part of the pain of being a newspaper feature writer is the constant demand to have your photograph taken. It’s hideous in every way. I don’t think I would have agreed to write about the Viva Mayr spa clinic in Austria if I’d known a snapper would be coming along to capture my every purging triumph. The good news? Mark is a really nice guy. The bad news? He had previously photographed David Aaronovitch of the Times in the same place. As Mark details his shoot list, I listen carefully, because writers must balance the need to be a helpful colleague with being a right diva. It’s the law. We clash over the spa’s ravishing swimming pool, in which I am supposed to caper while he snaps away. ‘I want you to get in the pool,’ he says. I am not getting in the pool. ‘Aaronovitch got in the pool.’ He’s got nicer breasts than me. We argue about this for hours until eventually I get into the pool in a groaning cozzie. I plan to outfox the lens by walking around the shallow end with knees bent like Groucho Marx, while looking insouciant yet sexy, like Anita Ekberg in the Trevi fountain. The very look that Aaronovitch himself has perfected. I’m in there for an age, knee bending away, until my skin wrinkles like a deflating balloon. After all this the pool pictures do not get used.