Absolutely fabulous!

She’s just scored a great political triumph with the success of the campaign to allow more Ghurkas into Britain. And she’s certainly more fun than Gordon Brown – even if she did date Ken Barlow for eight episodes of Coronation Street.

Joanna Lumley, a 63-year-old grandmother, is – of course – absolutely fabulous. But she is not exceptional.

There are thousands more like her.

All over the country, there are women of that sort of age running churches, charities, voluntary groups, selling raffle tickets, writing letters, collecting prescriptions, giving lifts, looking after small children, caring, coping, campaigning, doing thousands of hours of unpaid work on behalf of other people.

And they are invisible. Unless they have those Lumley looks and alluring posh voice, women over 50 are one of the most easily ignored sections of society. They’re not on TV much, or in films. Advertisers don’t woo them, fashion designers ignore them. One of the most successful spies was a middle aged woman – simply because no one noticed her, let alone what she was up to.

To be fair, most older women are probably not as stunning, with such a high profile or given to waving khukris around. But they still exist, and still have something to say – a lot more than many people.

In many ways, Joanna Lumley is typical. She has quietly supported many causes for many years – human rights and mental health charities, Sight Savers and Bookaid, all in a very British way. As she doesn’t flounce into foreign countries with a huge entourage to scoop up an orphan or two, they don’t get that much publicity.

But now she has been untypically noisy – on behalf of other people, of course – and triumphed, helped the Ghurkas and established herself as a national treasure.

Never underestimate the ability of a 63-year-old granny – especially when she’s backed by soldiers with their khukris.

Now there’s a thought for the next coffee morning.

Plenty of room for us all

REETH Green had vanished under cars. You couldn’t get parked in Muker. Great groups of people were going en masse up Gunnerside Gill.

The road up the dale was nearly as nose to tail with traffic as the MetroCentre in the week before Christmas.

I tucked the car into probably the last remaining parking place in Swaledale and walked from Low Row up to Crackpot and Summer Lodge. The weather went from baking sunshine to a hailstorm and back again, the views were glorious and the only people I met were one other couple, and a farmer on a quad bike. Bliss.

There is so much empty open space in the dales, so why do people want to be where everyone else is?

There’s plenty of room for us all – if we’d just spread out a bit.

Baby rusks

SHOCK horror – baby’s rusks are too sweet and too fatty, cereals designed specifically for children often have more sugar than a bowl of ice cream.

We knew that years ago. All the information is actually written on the side of the packet. All you have to do is read it.

All too often, products aimed specifically at children (“No artificial colours!” No artificial sweeteners!”) are actually chock full of sugar and other nasties. That’s why kids like them. And that’s why they got so used to sweet and sugary tastes, which can be pretty disastrous in the long term.

Next time you’re tempted to buy something deliberately designed for children, stop and read the packet.

You might need a magnifying glass to read the small print, you might need a calculator to work out the sums.

But the chances are that many of the products – from yoghurts to cereals and drinks – will horrify you.

Remember – the big food companies are there to make a profit.

You’re the one who really cares about what your children eat.

A spoonful of sugar is one thing – but nearly half a bowlful is another.

Not a very clever move, daddy

ELISE Tan-Roberts is an adorable two-year-old who is clearly very bright. No wonder her parents are proud. She spoke her first word at five months, could read her name before she was one and can do all sorts of clever things not normally achieved by children much older.

So bright, in fact, that she is already a member of Mensa.

Oh dear. Now everyone will be watching her, expecting great things. She might in deed prove to be a proper grown-up genius, in which case how sad that she’s lost even those early days of anonymity and toddlerhood.

Or she might have peaked too soon. In which case, the rest of her life will surely be one great anticlimax and failure. Tricky to deal with life equably when your greatest achievement was at the same time as potty training.

Her father has said he just wants her to be happy and enjoy herself.

In which case, surely it might have been better to keep quiet and let her do her early learning in the safety of privacy. Let her parents gawp proudly as she does differential calculus in the sandpit or whatever. Let the grannies boast and friends admire.

But leave it at that.

Telling the world at this stage of the game hardly seems clever at all.

Back behind the wheel

TWO thousand pound towards scrapping a car and buying a new one... and now rail fares are going to jump up again – 11 per cent on advanced fares for National Express East Coast plus a £5 seat reservation charge. They’re surely having a laugh.

So what happened to getting us out of our cars and onto public transport?

Vanished into hot air. And they wonder why our roads get ever more choked with traffic and the national stress levels soar.

What a fool

VERONICA Lario, wife of the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is demanding a divorce after yet more of her husband’s public encounters with glamorous teenagers.

Her motive is unlikely to be jealousy or even hurt – more likely that she no longer wants to be associated with someone who is making a complete and utter fool of himself and, at 72, has long been old enough to know better.

He fell for her charms when she was a young actress, stripping off on stage. Since then she has grown up, matured and moved on.

He, quite clearly, hasn’t.

A nice little earner for Coleen

COLEEN Rooney seems a pleasant sort of girl with no outstanding talent except for making money. Somehow she’s managed to make £3m just for, well, just for being married to Wayne Rooney really.

But it gets better. Now she’s expecting their first baby, she’s had so many offers for baby pictures, a fitness DVD and even a baby fashion range that their baby will have earned around £1m barely before it’s filled its designer nappy.

Don’t blame the magazines – we’re the ones daft enough to buy them.

Harriet Harman

HARRIET Harman has said that she absolutely does not want to be Prime Minister.

Yeah, right. Like I absolutely don’t want to be thin and rich.