How dare anyone call me a racist?

Twice in one week I have been called a racist. Both times it was by opponents to the war with Iraq, one a Frenchman, the other an Iraqi Kurd, both living in Britain.

The first occasion was on Channel 4's Richard and Judy, after France announced it would use its veto to block any second UN resolution. Their £1 billion annual trade with Iraq and exploration rights to two of its richest oil fields had just been revealed.

I commented that the French were skilled at pursuing their self-interest (let's not forget their ban on British beef still hasn't been lifted), famous for their Brie, not so famous for their bravery. Evidently that makes me a racist.

The second occasion was on Sunday, on a London radio show. After a particularly vicious attack on the values and the valour of the allied forces in Iraq, I asked the young Kurdish woman who described herself as an exile why, if she despised the values of this country so much, she chose to live here? That also was deemed to make me a racist.

They have about as much credibility as Mick Hucknall when he bleats on that comments about his red hair are a form of racism. Their comments trivialise the truly heinous.

And why is it that someone who speaks passionately against the war thinks they are compassionate and anyone who dares to argue for the war, equally passionately, is merely a racist warmonger?

The silent majority in this country, and it is now a majority, feel pretty much as I do. Almost 41,000 people took part in a vote last Friday on Richard and Judy - 66 per cent now back Bush and Blair on Iraq. An earlier poll asked whether France was right to threaten to use its veto - 77 per cent said no. I guess that makes them all racists, too?

I am no slavish acceptor of this war. When I see American prisoners of war on television and am told this is evidence of Saddam Hussein's brutality, I can't help but wonder how this is so very different from us showing pictures of Iraqi PoWs in various states of capture and surrender, or their fallen soldiers drinking from water bottles like children.

Nor am I unaware of the differences between us and the Americans. I wince when I hear Vice-Admira Timothy Keating saying to his troops, to the soundtrack of Queen's We Will Rock You: "When the President says 'Go', look out, it's hammer time."

Neither am I much taken by the euphemisms of Lt-Colonel Tim Collins saying of the fallen British soldiers "we will put them in their sleeping bags" and send them home. No body bags here.

As an Australian, I have lived here for 18 years, and have always viewed living in another country as a privilege, not a right. The very least that can be expected of people like me is the courtesy to respect this country's principles at this time. That includes supporting our armed forces when Parliament has democratically voted to go to war and our troops are in the firing line.

I was a reluctant recruit to this war. But like millions of others, I have been persuaded that it is just and necessary. Those who will truly benefit from an Iraq free of Saddam Hussein are the Iraqi people themselves. How on earth can wanting to bring about that end be racist?

Catherine the fake

Catherine Zeta-Jones justified going ahead with the Oscars on the grounds that in times of trouble we all need some escapism. The only escape we need right now is from her.

Geyser-Jones performed her now legendary display of gushing hot air and tears. If I hear her say she "lurves" her husband one more time I'll part company with my lunch. And for a moment there, even old Michael Douglas looked queasy.

CZ-J is the kind of woman who thinks togetherness is having matching his-and-hers fake tans. Deep on the surface, but they never last.

Jane Clark has just completed The Last Diaries, left unfinished by her husband Alan before his death from a brain tumour. In the months before he died, Alan Clark didn't want to go in to hospital and he didn't want anyone to know he was dying.

His doctors said Jane couldn't do 24-hour nursing. Her reply: "Well, you can if it's your husband and you love him." It reminded me of the last days of my brother, when his wife Hellene nursed him around the clock at home. From the moment Michael was told he had between six and 18 months to live, he was never in hospital except as an outpatient.

The diagnosis proved to be the only optimistic thing about his cancer. He lasted four months.

No one even knew he was ill. That's the way he wanted it. I remember thinking as I sat in the back garden where we had played and fought as children that Hellene had given Michael something very special - the peace to die with what little dignity cancer affords in his own bed, not one moment wasted away from the woman and the children that were his life.

Jane Clark is right. Love means you can do almost anything.

The public pain of Sophie's IVF ordeal

Stop for a moment and imagine what it must be like to be Sophie Wessex. After years of trying to have a baby, a particularly nasty ectopic pregnancy and several attempts at IVF, you pick up the Sunday papers and read the happy news. You're pregnant.

The next day Prince Edward fails to confirm it.

Whether it proves to be true or not, how sad for a woman who desperately wants a child to have her trials aired so publicly. One in five women are childless by the age of 40, most of them not by choice.

Any woman who has longed for the thin blue line to appear on a home pregnancy test, who has cried when her period has arrived, or has sat across from a doctor who had "no" in their eyes long before it left their mouth will have more than a passing sympathy for Sophie Wessex today.

A bum job for older women

Meg Ryan refuses to have a "bottom double" for love scenes in her new movie In The Cut, believing her 41-year-old derriere is up to the job. Clearly she does not suffer from body-image insecurity.

Any normal woman over the age of 30 knows that every year sees the inexorable slide of one's buttocks down the back of one's thighs by about one eighth of an inch a year. Until 30 we use the pencil test to measure the firmness of our breasts. After that it's to measure the slippage of our bottoms.

You may be making a big mistake, Meg. Remember, you can't Botox your bum.

Rolf - my birthday boyDiscussing over dinner whether anyone would, even if they could, pay the current asking price of £5 million for Mick Jagger to come and sing at their birthday, the conversation turned to whom we would choose as our own living legend. I smugly revealed that my wish had already come true.

Rolf Harris sang at my birthday party and performed Two Little Boys in the kitchen. I have the pictures to prove it.

"How old were you?" someone asked. "Forty," I replied. The laughter that followed still puzzles me.