Diary – 7 April 2016

It’s clear that Vladimir Putin has had a facelift, which might explain why Wendi Deng would take an interest in him. But a friend who met him was surprised enough to ask his translator why it was so obvious. ‘Surely he has enough money to get a better one done?’ he said. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied. ‘But here in Russia, a facelift is a status symbol so everyone has to be aware that it’s been done.’ I wonder if the reason American women continue to go for the wind-tunnel effect favoured by Joan Rivers isn’t based on the same social pressure. Wealth and power have their own looks.

After nearly 50 years of giving advice, my career as an agony aunt appears to be at an end. There’s no room at the Indie for me — either on the i or in the online version. Love you, they say, but no cash. It was flattering to be part of agony-aunt history — from Marje Proops, Claire Rayner and Anna Raeburn to Evelyn Home. The job was a wonderful way of riding the journalism wave and doing a bit of good at the same time. And the letters! Most were heartbreaking, but there were some memorable cries for help. ‘Dear Vagina,’ wrote one reader. ‘I have a problem with my Virginia.’

An exhibition on camouflage to be held in the Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum this summer has prompted me to rummage through my father’s archive. He served as a camouflage officer in Leamington during the war and I have several photographs of him and his team (wearing suits and ties, of course) painting away at models of factories, trying to disguise them as fields of sheep, housing estates or patches of scrubland.