Celebs are too bonkers to be role models – except one, writes Jo Haywood
I’ve dumped the diet for good and have been channelling all my efforts into rediscovering what a normal person does to stay fit and healthy. But I’ve hit a snag – no one I know is normal.
One friend doesn’t eat protein with carbs, another eats cream cakes but only drinks black tea (it’s not the gargantuan éclair that’s making her fat, it’s the pipette of semi-skimmed in her brew apparently) and a third appears to eat nothing but salt (she even puts it on Chinese food, which makes my face pucker at the mere thought).
Most celebs are no better either. After reading dozens of online articles, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re just as bonkers as the rest of us (only with better lighting and more jewellery). If they’re not eating baby food, they’re doing yoga in a sauna for 14 hours a day or nourishing themselves (celebs don’t scoff grub, they nourish themselves) with raw beetroot and hand-picked quinoa (yes, I know it’s pronounced ‘keee-noir’ Gwyneth, don’t keep going on about it).
For one very scary moment I thought I was going to have to scale the sheer cliff-face of normality alone, searching in solitude for a way to live a healthy life, unshackled by calorie-counting and a constant niggling fear that I might be half an ounce heavier than I was the day before (damn those Pringles and their evil deliciousness!).
But then I found her. Sophie Dahl – my new mentor, inspiration and the woman I’m going to stalk until she takes out a restraining order or moves to Uzbekistan (a country which, according to my mother, doesn’t exist).
I hadn’t noticed her before because she was sitting at the back, quietly reading a book of poetry while nibbling prettily on a Madeleine biscuit. But she’s definitely the one for me; the one to show me the way to normalcy (while wearing a vintage tea dress under an over-sized cardigan and drinking Earl Grey out of mismatched crockery).
But pretty frocks and floral saucers are just two of the reasons I’ve chosen the delicious Miss Dahl (or Dahling as I’m sure she won’t mind me calling her) to be my wise and trusted teacher. She’s also an unrepentant bookworm who quotes poetry and reads with her legs tucked under her in leather wingback chairs; she’s supremely talented at pottering and pootling; she’s willowy but doesn’t shy away from a good pud; she wouldn’t look out of place in a Parisian market, conversing fluently with a moustachioed cheesemonger over the provenance of a particularly pungent camembert; and she uses words like… no, it’s gone (it was ‘mellifluous’ – I had to look it up).
So, that’s me sorted. I’m going to be something like Sophie this summer. But what about you? Who’s going to be your imaginary life coach?