KATE and I used to be just like that (I'm crossing my fingers, which is not a good idea when you are tpyiing - sorry, typing). We were pals, chums, mates and the bosomiest of bosom buddies. But it's all over now. The friendship is dead. I...sniff...don't love her anymore.

Kate Winslet, my former imaginary best friend, had been something of a favourite of mine since I first saw her in Heavenly Creatures. It's not that I particularly admired her acting acumen, her beauty and her brains, it was more to do with the fact that I got the distinct impression she was a bit of a laugh. The sort of girl you could happily sink a few drinks with while swapping filthy jokes.

She looked as if she really could be the girl next door. If the girl next door was a multi-million dollar box office earner with award nominations coming out of her ears and a shiny, new husband on the mantelpiece. Her riches were undeniable, but there always seemed to be more to her than that, something going on behind those big blue eyes (not an attribute many Hollywood actresses share).

I have stuck by her through thick and thin, literally in the case of that glossy magazine cover in which it appeared the flesh had been sucked out of her thighs and pumped straight into her boobs. I even managed to keep the faith when she walked away from that nice, down-to-earth Yorkshireman she married.

But now it's all over. I will no longer be available for drinks and dirty jokes if she happens to call. The answerphone is on, but no one is home.

It's rare that a newspaper article makes me shout obscenities across the office, although I have been known to swear loudly at the TV pages when the scheming schedulers move one of my favourite programmes to four o'clock in the morning. But a feature entitled "Kate the supermum" in the Daily Maul made my blood boil so hot that it almost fizzed out of my ears like a ketchup fountain.

Talking smugly about what she referred to as her "supermum moments", my old best friend and new-found enemy described how she rose at 5am with her son Joe, showered, got dressed, fed the baby and pureed enough chicken and butternut squash to keep him going for a couple of days before leaving for work at 7am.

"It's so amazing being a mum," she gushed. "I love the sense that I can do it all."

The contents of my stomach started to shift at this point, and it wasn't just the thought of all that pureed butternut squash. But worse was to come.

Kate has apparently now decided that she doesn't want to be referred to as a working mother, a label that seems entirely appropriate as she is a) a mother who b) works. She prefers to call herself "a devoted, loving and very present mother, who every now and then goes off to work".

Well, I would like to call myself "a long-legged, Proust-reading supermodel, who every now and then goes off to frolic with George Clooney", but saying it don't make it so.

No one should ever be ashamed to call themselves a working mother. It should be a badge we wear with pride. Personally, I'm going to wear mine next to my "I love Imelda Staunton" badge - she's my new imaginary best friend now.

I WATCHED the 100 Greatest Tearjerkers on television the other night and the only one that made me cry was the death of Stan Ogden. What on earth does that say about me?

On second thoughts, I don't want to know.

Updated: 10:38 Monday, February 21, 2005