I’ve never owned a Kylie Minogue record, nor been even vaguely interested in the Aussie budgerigar (I prefer Bruce Springsteen).
Yet there was a moment in her new Netflix series when I did shed a quiet tear.
It was when she revealed that after she had been diagnosed a second time with breast cancer, she kept it secret. And against doctor’s orders, cancelled chemotherapy to try IVF again for the baby she desperately wanted.
That word ‘again’ is important – because so many women have quietly gone through IVF multiple times. Endured the days, weeks and months when the only appointment in the diary is with the fertility specialist.
I know because I am one of them. The Lister Fertility Clinic, miles from where I lived in London, became my second home.
And yet I didn’t tell anyone because I was ashamed, fearful people would think I was less of a woman because I couldn’t have a child naturally. In the end I couldn’t have a child at all. No doctors could determine the cause of my infertility. A car crash when I was 17 that nearly killed me? An ectopic pregnancy in my late twenties that led to an ovary being removed? Who knows?
I remember the fertility drugs, the appointments with a full bladder to enhance the scan, the futile egg-removal procedures. The bloating, the fatigue, mood swings, all suffered in private.
I’d struggle when a friend or relative told me they were pregnant. I sobbed in the street when I passed the Baby Gap shop.
Against doctor’s orders, Kylie Minogue cancelled chemotherapy to try again with IVF for the baby she so desperately wanted
In her eponymous documentary, Kylie reads a letter that she wrote to her future child
Kylie evidently suffered just as much and yet was cruelly berated online for not having a child.
There are thousands of us who aren’t among the lucky ones with children. It takes guts to publicly address the anguish – and to keep on smiling. So thank you for your honesty, Kylie.
Is Sydney too sexy?
People say Sydney Sweeney is the ‘sexiest woman on the planet’, says Amanda Platell
Star of the hit HBO series Euphoria, Sydney Sweeney is celebrated as ‘the sexiest woman on the planet’ with around 8.5million viewers a week watching her in the show.
That’s possibly because she’s mostly naked and sometimes has a snake wrapped around her private parts. The ‘Syren’ lingerie she wears in the series may have sold out online, earning her an astonishing $18million at just 28.
Yet it all rather leaves me wondering whether her label as the sexiest woman alive is a blessing – or actually a curse.
Hero of the week is former Labour Party donor Duncan Bannatyne of Dragons’ Den fame. The dad of six (five of them girls) had one word to describe Andy Burnham after hearing the Labour leader hopeful supports letting men who self-identify as female use women’s toilets and changing rooms: ‘Cretin’.
A moment of reflection as we reach the 15th anniversary of the end of the Iraq War, during which we lost 179 brave British service personnel. Think of the 3,500 servicemen and women wounded too. And how do we reward such heroes? Give them sub-standard military accommodation – while ushering in illegal boat migrants and sending them to luxury hotels within days.
Family life isn’t all rosy for Beckham
I’ve loved watching The Chelsea Flower show on the BBC, especially Sarah Eberle’s gold medal winner which celebrates wild gardens on urban fringes.
Yet bewildering that former footballer David Beckham had a rose named after him, supposedly inspired by ‘enduring natural beauty, resilience and family’. And this is the dad whose first-born Brooklyn regards him as knotweed.
Earl’s wife? Stay grounded
When Earl Spencer enjoyed his fourth wedding this week, marrying archaeologist girlfriend Cat in the Arizona desert, it was joyously dubbed ‘The Toff and the Prof’.
Jolly good. I wish them happiness. But which other famous couple married in a remote location? You got there before me – JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette on an island off Georgia in the US. Advice to Cat, enjoy your new love, just don’t get on a plane with him flying.
Barry Manilow’s 1974 hit Mandy contains the lyrics: ‘Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking’
My colleague Dan Hodges wrote this week that Starmer tried to bury the Mandelson Files because they’ll prove terminal for the PM following his appointment of Mandy as US ambassador. What bugs me is that it makes it impossible for any of us other Mandys to listen to Barry Manilow’s hit without cringing at the lines: ‘Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking’.
Sad news that Wish You Were Here star presenter Judith Chalmers has died aged 90 after losing her battle with Alzheimer’s, which everyone loses in the end. As I experienced with my mum, the only blessing is that our beloved Judith wouldn’t have remembered a thing, except how much she was loved.
Bad to worse, for Andrew
Just as we thought things couldn’t get worse for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor we learn police are widening a misconduct in public office probe into him to consider other offences including sexual misconduct and corruption.
New allegations include that Jeffrey Epstein sent a woman to the UK for sex with Andrew in 2010, mirroring allegations made by the late Virginia Giuffre, claims he has denied.
Queen Elizabeth is said to have paid millions to settle her son’s case with Giuffre. It is unlikely King Charles or Prince William will extend such largesse to silence a new accuser.
Surprising that the parents of Madeleine McCann, Kate and Gerry, attack the Channel 5 show Under Suspicion: Kate McCann, a drama following claims Kate was a suspect in her child’s disappearance saying ‘it will harm our family’.
Surely the McCanns should be thanking Channel 5 for keeping alive the search for Madeleine who disappeared when she was three, after they left her with her two-year-old twin siblings in their room while they were out eating with friends at a tapas bar.
An insult to women
Despite a High Court ruling that women should not have to share safe spaces like loos or changing rooms with trans women – ie biological blokes in lippy with dangly bits – new guidance from the Equality and Humans Right Commission says they can’t be challenged when entering such spaces.
What, even if you feel threatened? And this new guidance is accompanied by an image of a woman in a dress, a man in trousers and a ‘trans woman’ in half a dress. Not just an insult to women’s intelligence but to our right to protection.
How heartwarming was King Charles on his visit to Northern Ireland, laughing off a seagull pooping on his jacket, saying it was a ‘blessing’. Yep, my mum used to say that when pigeons pooped on us, it was lucky. As was a marauding magpie trying to peck our eyes out as we played in the yard.
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