Forget the eggs

I’m a celebrity for hire. I do good causes for free — makes me feel good, dunnit? That’s the deal. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Be delighted to open a Fairtrade event in Witney. Be lovely.’

‘You’re doing what?!’ said Mrs Neate James on Saturday morning. ‘You’re going to Witney? Well, that’s lovely for you. I’ll look after the kids as well as being pregnant and working full-time, shall I? Huh. So selfish.’ She’s had a rough week, started a new job in fashion. There is only one time zone in fashion and that is ‘right now’. Tattling twits from America have been calling her at two o’clock in the morning, wanting to know if Cornwall is in Devon and whether it will be sunny there next Thursday. Unbelievable.

I’d imagined us all going to Witney together, singing along to the Stranglers’ Greatest Hits, cutting the tape at the town hall, grabbing some Nicaraguan coffee beans and then dashing off to Woolworth’s to go mental on plastic toys made in China. But she’d had 500 emails, voicemails, texts and instant messages while she slept, the kids had been to Witney the day before and it was raining. So I went on my own.

Parking hadn’t been part of my Witney dream, either. Eventually, I wedged the thing in somehow into a 30-minute spot and, noting a traffic warden, dashed in late.

Then I was holding an eight-foot inflatable Fairtrade banana and, for some reason, André Gide suddenly sprang to mind. Gide believed all our actions are ultimately selfish. Still holding the banana, I mused on how far we’ve come. The subsequent generation of French Thinkers believed that life was pointless. Any quest or need for deeper meanings in human existence seemed redundant concerns as I stood there grinning for the cameras with a gaggle of ecstatic prizewinning children and holding my gigantic, reasonable banana.