I’m shopping mad

But I am trying to make a concerted effort to conquer my phobia with intensive aversion therapy, which means I now have to spend most of my spare time lurking about in Harvey Nicks.

Now, Mr Nichols and I have had a somewhat tumultuous relationship over the years. I love the idea of Yorkshire having its own posh people's store, but I've rarely been tempted to shop there.

In fact, I've only ever bought one thing: a bag of jelly beans for my cousin, partly because I wanted to show him how completely smashing he is but mainly because I wanted to get my hands on a Harvey Nicks' bag.

The doormen put me off for a start. Individually, they are always very nice chaps, with a ready smile and a friendly welcome, but there is something vaguely discomforting about a mature gentleman opening doors for a living.

And then, of course, there are the women - and it is mostly women - who work on the shop floor.

Again, individually I'm sure they are nice as pie, but they can be a scary sight when they descend en masse, armed with perfume bottles and smiles that make the Stepford Wives look warm and cuddly.

They just don't look like real human beings. They walk and talk like the rest of us, but they look like a vital part has been left out somewhere along the way, perhaps when they toppled off the production line as they were being cast in the same tall, thin, tanned mould.

I once felt the full force of their barely restrained distaste when I was called in to write a feature on the highs and lows of being a personal shopper at Harvey Nicks.

I had 30 quid burning a whole in my pocket, so I perused the sale rail while waiting for my interviewee.

I soon discovered, however, that my money was not going to stretch very far - I probably could have bagged myself a coathanger, but only if it was a bit bent - so instead I had to pretend that there simply wasn't anything worth buying, flicking brusquely past cashmere sweaters like they were tatty, jumble sale remnants and tutting in disgust. But that money was not going to spend itself, so I nipped out of Harvey Nicks at lunchtime and went on the prowl for bargains.

Precisely four-and-a-half minutes later I had spent the lot in Primark and was staggering back across the road with bags full of shoes, T-shirts, knickers, kids' pyjamas and a bracelet that had set me back a whole pound.

It wasn't until I was standing in the middle of Mr Nichols' emporium laden down with 14 Primark plaggy bags that I realised my mistake.

The looks on the faces of the Stepford staff could have frozen lava.

But I'm continuing with my therapy all the same.

Today, I'm planning on running round Fortnum & Mason with a Netto bag slung over each arm.

BEING a rising television starlet isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Three weeks into the six-week run of a less than riveting BBC2 series in which I play such a small part I fall somewhere between boom operator' and tea trolley' in the programme-making roll of honour, I had at least expected a scrum of paparazzi to be hiding in the bushes outside my front door to snap me every time I pop out to Asda wearing my slippers and an ill-fitting T-shirt.

In fact, the only photographer who has shown the remotest interest in my existence has been a snapper from this paper, and he refused to chase me down the street, harass my neighbours or airbrush out my cellulite.

Only one person has asked for my autograph, but that was just a delivery man dropping off a parcel. And the television crew camped out near my home was not, as I first suspected, trying to get candid shots of me walking my daughter to her gymnastics class, but was instead following up on a story in The Press about our local hoodie-hating newsagent.

Thanks to your apathy, I might now have to rethink the best-selling autobiography and the blockbuster bio-pic.

Demi Moore will be very upset when I tell her the film's off though. Apparently, she was looking forward to playing a fat-arsed northerner because it had Oscar-nomination written all over it.