• Home
• UK Politics
• World Politics
• Policy
• Media
• Lifestyle
• Sport
• Contributors
• Topics

Friday Diary: What Would Kate Do?

Shelagh Fogarty praises a unique form of dieting discipline.

By Shelagh Fogarty

30 Sep 2011, 12:19

* I started my week with a new media heroine - Becky Pugh in The Telegraph. I've taken to skipping most female columnists because more often than not they sound like the girls I would have steered clear of at school. You know the type. Bright enough, very definitely in the social mix and full to the brim of cynicism with a sneer that's never far from the surface. They almost always save their 'best' swipes for other women. Not Becky! Her column was fun, smart, and a little self deprecating where others are smug, tart and self defeating. Take her short piece on a new diet plan she and a friend have devised with the unwitting help of the Duchess of Cambridge -  The WWKD diet. It's simple and costs nothing. Everytime you reach for the stuff you probably shouldn't be eating or drinking ask yourself, 'What Would Kate Do? Inspired and no intention to wound. 

* I experienced a first this week. Single handedly I managed to complete a self assembly garden ottoman ( mini shed, basically). More to the point I did it without tears of frustration and helplessness welling up (crying, basically) and without ringing anyone (distress call, basically). I'm chuffed, basically!

* The nicest complement anyone ever gave me was that I have a talent for friendship. Like most people I have a small group of friends who, as the quotation goes 'meet all of my varying moods' - the people who know me to the core and I them. I've noticed over the years as I've  continued to make new friends, lots of people around me do not. Am I a glutton or are they starving themselves? I wonder because this week I made a new friend, after we got chatting at tables outside a pretty café near where we both live. It turns out we are from the same place, and have spent time over the years in many of the same places too, here and abroad. The chatter between us was instant and cut through the social niceties quickly. He's a teacher at a school in central London and after hearing his passion for his job and thoughtfulness about the pupils I thought about all the negatives this Summer over the education of our children. Hope, like friendship, springs eternal.

* Buying a car holds no joy for me, but I'm doing it anyway. All that salesmanship, pretending you only half like a car when you really want it, haggling over the price, asking what comes with the price, pretending the colour doesn't matter when it clearly does (or is that just women?) My toes are curling just thinking about it. I've been to a dealership three times this week, did the walking away thing, got the price down, and no matter what gains I make in the bartering process, I still feel like a couple of grubby hoodlums have just roughed me up in an alley! Is there a nicer way to buy a car or am I just a bit soft?

* I met Hugh Morris this week at an event I was hosting. The MD of England Cricket gave a fascinating and very real account of the business, sporting and personal development of the whole of Cricket which has led to better grassroots planning, nurturing talent, and three Ashes victories in six years after only a handful of wins in the previous half century. What stood out was how no stone was left unturned, up to an including the players' families. He told a great story about a dinner for the WAGs, hosted by England Coach Andy Flower, in the days leading up to the Ashes 2010. Flower told the women that over the course of the series some of the players would underperform and he would shout at them because of it. He told their partners to bear that in mind when the men came back to the hotel room looking for comfort and reassurance. When they do that, he said, do what any good wife or girlfriend should do - "Tell them to grow a pair and represent their country better!' Now that's sports psychology.