The joy of friend-dropping, my take on Trump’s Covid and what I’ve learned about plastic surgery

It’s a funny thing when your friends find that someone special: every so often, they aren’t so much “special” as “having all the poise and charm of damp grey towel”. Everyone surely knows one couple (at least) where it’s happened. An impossibly glamorous, fascinating friend marries Boris Karloff with a charisma bypass. I suspect many old pals of Meghan feel a bit like this about Prince Harry — they signed up to spend hours gossiping and partying with this dazzling actress, and now they have to suffer through hours of tedious chat about helicopters.

You can’t quite work out how it’s happened. Hopefully they’re as mind-blowing between the sheets as they’re mind-numbing over drinks, but they always dim the pleasure of meeting beloved friends. It’s like ordering a glass of vintage champagne only to find it’s been diluted with warm tap water.

I was recently discussing this with a friend while we were planning an autumnal dinner party. The usual terrible compromises were looming when, suddenly, we realised we’d been liberated. The Rule of Six (which always sounds like a sexually ambiguous Nineties boyband) means all those disastrous other halves can (and must) be discarded due to lack of space.

For a little while at least we can be socially slutty. It’s finally time to delete all the boring plus-ones ... it’s for the good of the nation.

Like almost everyone on the planet, I’m watching with grim fascination to see what happens to the Trumps as they battle Covid-19. After the news broke, it seemed the internet had split between those wishing the President well and those who thought his hospitalisation was richly deserved. Even Dominic West said he’d jumped for joy when he heard the President was sick ... whereupon half the internet jumped on him for his insensitivity.

For myself, I’ve seen too much of sickness and death to wish it on anyone. It was wrong for West to express delight but it seems rank hypocrisy to threaten to cancel him for saying something many were thinking. We don’t always respond with perfectly calibrated sympathy when we hear about illness. Some feel pity, some relief and some — for any number of complicated reasons — feel satisfaction. Those outraged need to take a long look at themselves before they wag their Twitter fingers at others.

Do you ever look at those splendid, shiny balloons at birthday parties? Have you ever seen them a few days later when they miserably deflate? Bobbing gloomily along the floor, waiting to be thrown in the bin?

I mention this because I went with a friend to Antwerp pre-Covid to have her boobs done. She felt they’d reached that balloon-dustbin stage.

My friend’s a feminist and all-round badass who makes Margaret Thatcher look like one of the meeker characters in The Handmaid’s Tale. But after three kids, she’d looked at her sagging jubblies and said: “No thanks.” So, off she went and I decided to pop along too. I thought it might make a delightful episode in the camp reality show I sometimes pretend I’m in.

But I ended up learning something. Over shots in the recovery room, she explained why she’d wanted her norks re-inflated. It wasn’t because she wanted to impress anyone, she just wanted to feel restored. She was doing it for one person: herself.

If you’re considering cosmetic surgery, I think it’s an important message. Never do it for other people. The only person whose opinion counts is your own.