Angela Merkel's Husband & The Huge Handbag

Yesterday, standing before an almost life-size painting of Queen Elizabeth 1 in the National Portrait Gallery, I had a flash of insight, a rare moment of self-knowledge, an epiphany... On the train to London that morning I had written a 'piece' about Z-listers, minor celebrities who dominate the newspapers, magazines and television screen. It was easy to write and quite funny...the accent being on 'quite'. It consisted essentially of hints for those wishing to be a Z-lister. Unless your name is Kate, as in Moss, Blanchett, Holmes or Winslet, A listing is out of reach. For that you need to be talented, beautiful, clever, or well connected and preferably all those things. But minor celebrity is available to all of us. It is simply a question of winning a 'talent' show, appearing on 'reality' television, or – as we have seen in the last week – marrying a world politician. As they gathered together in one great public relations lie to try to make us believe that world problems could be solved by a couple of days shaking hands and high-fiving, the spouses engaged in a well-publicized programme of predictable activities. Hospital visits are a favourite, with trips to cancer sufferers being a winner, it seems. One of my main objections to train travel is the fear of a crash. Not the crash itself but the dread of being incarcerated in hospital, unable to speak and being visited by a minor royal or politician's wife making some puerile patronising point.

Now before you say I am jealous of celebrities – jealousy being the usual response to any criticism – we as a family are not strangers to celebrity ourselves. In the early 70's my son, on a wet and windy family holiday, won The Most Beautiful Boy in Broadstairs competition. He was presented with a box of Black Magic chocolates and a kiss by Ted Heath. He was wearing blue eye-shadow. Ted Heath, not the Broadstairs' Beauty. Which brings me to the question that has perplexed me all week. Does Angela Merkel's husband wear blue eye-shadow? We shall never know. The wives of politicians were trotted out for us to ogle and criticize as though they were runners up in the X factor.. I noted that Mrs Brown would be well advised to be measured for some decent underwear to overcome her lumpen post-pregnancy look; that Mrs Obama, being so large boned and ever smiling, runs the risk of rudely taking up too much space; that the French President would be better served if his wife, now looking like she has fallen from the tightrope of chic into the valley of dowdy, stopped wearing flat pumps that simply draw attention to his dwarfishness. No, Mr Merkel is well advised to stay away from chats about make-up with Mrs O., and from our unkind Heat-trained eye and concentrate instead on his chemistry professorship. After all no real man would put up with it and the wonder is that these intelligent and seriously professional women go along with it.

If you don't fancy being married to a politician – at the moment I am curiously drawn to Vince Cable, despite his name – and would prefer to emulate the national obsession that is the staple of magazines, there are easy routes to achieving their lifestyle. 'Flesh sells' is their ugly mantra so you have to throw away your coats, jackets and cardies. Go clubbing and I don't mean the W.I. You will need to learn how to be sick in a gutter in front of people. Inelegant stumbling is more difficult than you think. As, too, is looking really cheap while at the same time looking like you have tried too hard. (An A-lister will never look like they care.) You must invest in some seriously huge handbags that hang from your stick-thin arm – you only eat junk food that you regurgitate later. In Britain today ambition is a handbag. You should cultivate a glazed look when conversation moves away from you and learn the key mantra 'my agent, my agent..' Throw away your sense of humour and your knickers. Develop delusions of adequacy while changing your name to something beginning with Ch...Chingford, Chanice, Chinatown have the right sound. Be sprayed with toxic waste to get the same weathered leather look that you can see in Russell and Bromley's window display. Sell your body for cash if you can. This is always a winner with the press.

Standing, looking at the collection of Tudor paintings so beautifully displayed, cunningly lit so that the painted jewels sparkle just as though real or the paint, after four hundred years, is still wet, my breath is taken away by something beyond alphabet listing. Just genius. Genius lasts. It never comes and goes. It is beyond fashion.

And then it occurs to me. That epiphany. Someone is boring me. And that person is me. I look into Queen Elizabeth's eyes. You can only truly be hurt by what you do yourself...what others do is neither here nor there. Those girls in their skimpy frocks and no knickers and dull eyes were never going to save lives or build monuments or carve a swathe through Professor Merkel's world of chemistry. Lazy journalism simply uses them because it is easy and about as appropriate as the pimp mocking the tart. Easy to mock and take some spurious moral high-ground when really they are totally harmless. This is their moment of excitement and glamour, of recognition, of photoshopping and make-up and the lust for a new handbag...and what if it all comes to an end? They can go back to the call centre from whence they came, or buy a tanning studio or marry a footballer from Accrington Stanley. It really doesn't matter because I don't believe that there are bright schoolgirls destined to find the cure for cancer or to be the next Angela Merkel who are going to give it all away just for the sake of a D and G handbag. Because we aren't seriously affected by what we read in rubbish magazines or see on television or else we would all be Kate Moss or Cheryl Cole and certainly celebrity chefs.

Lesley: an essentially private person who wished her total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.(apologies to Tom Stoppard talking about James Joyce)You know how people say that when they meet royalty or celebrities they become like gibbering idiots? And you know how we all laugh contemptuously because we know we are much too sophisticated for that to happen to us and we would effortlessly engage in jolly badinage? Well, last week I met Claire Balding, the racing commentator and general all round television personality and presenter, who I have admired for years. I stood before her and said, pitifully, 'Claire Balding. I love you.'The shame of it.