Celebrity Weight Loss - Unrealistic?

Hannah Waterman, ex-soap actress and part-time star of BBC One's 'New Tricks', has just launched a new fitness DVD, detailing how she went from a Size 16 to a Size 6 in just a few months.

Now, I by no means wish to belittle this achievement in any way, shape or form - that much of a transformation certainly deserves to be applauded.

However, she, along with Natalie Cassidy and all the other weight-loss celebrities have had the help of personal trainers, and the money to pay for them.

Their DVDs are aimed at everyday women wanting to lose weight but their methods in doing so are anything but. How many of their target audience can realistically afford a personal trainer or masses of gym sessions a week? Would they even have the time if they COULD afford it?

Just once, wouldn't it be better for a celebrity to release a DVD telling people how they did it by themselves? How their audience too could drop two stone in two months without the aid of a well-stocked bank account?

Now that is a DVD I really would like to see.

Leona vs Playboy

Leona Lewis has reportedly been offered £1million to
grace the covers of Playboy - an offer which she has turned down.
Well, good for her.
Some people might say that she is mad to decline that amount of cash, but then they must remember that a. Leona doesn't need the money and b. she's FAR too classy to do a spread like that.
She's amazingly talented, with numerous hit singles, a hit album and masses of awards celebrating her achievements - why would she want to throw away her credibility after that?

Is it now the Ex-Factor?

So, John and Edward were finally poised to be out of the X Factor competition, and looked likely to be after being pitted against 18-year-old Lucie Jones, who can actually sing. As much as I've enjoyed the twins' antics, the fact that they did not secure enough votes to stop them from landing in the bottom two suggests, perhaps, that they are not as popular as they once were. This year's X Factor has slowly been losing its credentials as a singing competition, with the twins at the forefront, but Simon Cowell finally had the chance to do something about it. And he didn't. Because he thinks that John and Edward will have people tuning in to watch their antics. And they probably will. But there is also the risk that this attitude will backfire as he is now turfing out talented singers in favour of two boys who are merely there to make a spectacle of themselves. He cannot now blame it on the public, who, it seems, were trying to show tonight that, actually, the twins aren't for them so much anymore. Only next week's show will prove whether Cowell made the right choice.

Stupidity - is it a crime?

Tina Griekspoor and her mother Evelyn Border have been very publicly shamed, after they stole £50 worth of giftcards from a nine-year-old girl on her birthday.
The two women, who spied the cards on a shelf after the child put them down to talk to a WalMart clerk, used the money on them to pay for their own goods.
However, instead of being sentenced to what would likely to have been jail time, Griekspoor and Border agreed to stand outside the Bedford County courthouse in Pennsylvania, U.S, wearing sandwich boards denoting their crime: "I stole from a 9-year-old on her birthday! Don't steal or this could happen to you!"
This got me thinking about the case of Philip Laing, a 19-year-old student from Macclesfield, who urinated over wreaths of poppies on a war memorial after getting stupendously drunk on a bar crawl and is now looking at a prison sentence.
I remember, quite visibly, many moons ago, a teacher of mine telling my class about the case of another young man, who had also gotten drunk, peeing in the street and getting arrested and imprisoned for indecent exposure. After his stint inside, he was, apparently, never the same.
Now, I in no way approve of what this young man did. However, I think that for a crime that most people could put down to sheer stupidity and a tremendous amount of booze, prison isn't the place for him. After already being splashed over the pages of the national papers, the humiliation he has suffered is, I feel, a more appropriate punishment.
Perhaps the UK should lead by the U.S's example and publicly shame, rather than imprison, people who have committed crimes such as these.

The Lady (Gaga) is a Tramp

Lady Gaga has done it again. Pictured in yet another one of her 'if-I-wasn't-famous-I'd-be-arrested' outfits, this woman seems hell-bent on stretching the laws of common decency to the absolute limit.
For someone who says she is 'a real artist', Miss Gaga (real name Stefani Germanotta) is hardly going out of her way to make people take her seriously. Since the success of her debut single 'Just Dance', it is now more likely you'll remember her for her outrageous dress sense than her music - and not in a quirky Helena Bonham Carter kind of way, either. Lady Gaga can easily be labelled as much of an attention seeker as Lindsay Lohan or Kerry Katona. Yes, she has talent, but she is wasting all her credibility by being a publicity whore.
Take note, Gaga - if you want to be around in 25 years' time, tone down the nudity and promote a well-rounded, classy image. Because if you continue dressing like that once your body's gone... well, let's just say your music better be pretty damn good.

An insensitive twitter

Online today, I read a story about Penelope Trunk, a 42-year-old chief executive from Wisconsin, who 'tweeted' about how happy she was to be having a miscarriage.

Aside from the fact that she 'tweeted' this DURING a board meeting, Miss Trunk's sheer lack of compassion is what struck a nerve with me most. Her post on Twitter read: "I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f***ed-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin".

Now, I will admit that if I got pregnant and didn't want the baby, I might feel relieved if I had a miscarriage - it would take out a lot of stress and trauma from the idea of having to go through with an abortion.

However, I wouldn't tell the world this. In fact, I probably wouldn't even tell most of my family how I felt.
To me, a thought like that rings of pure selfishness and a disregard for a human life that was created due to a mistake made by me, not the baby.

In fairness to Miss Trunk, her Tweet could be excused as a momentary lack of judgment, bought on by the relief of not having to go through with such an unpleasant procedure.

Except that she is completely unrepentant.

She told CNN that she had 'no regrets', that it was 'no different to me saying what I had for lunch' and that it was a 'public service announcement, [which made] people talk about the taboos of miscarriage and unwanted pregnancy'.

Yes, it has made people talk about those taboos; however, from a woman who's already had two abortions, it seems to me that Miss Trunk is not careful when it comes to contraception, and would rather throw a life away than deal with the consequences of her actions. After all, comparing the death of your child to being no more shocking than what you had for lunch is hardly a shining beacon of compassion, is it?

And yes, Miss Trunk, I'm sure the Pope WOULD prefer a miscarriage over an abortion - but I think, most of all, that he would prefer you didn't have an unwanted pregnancy in the first place.