I'm writing this entry with my head hung in shame. I feel guilty for not posting a single, solitary entry for the whole of December, but there are mitigating circumstances which I hope give me some excuse for my failure to come up with the goods. I got an e-mail this morning from a regular reader who was bemoaning the fact that there was nothing new to read - it's not as if nothing happened to me, but more a case of so much happening that I haven't found a free moment to write about it.

This is not a good time for any of us, what with hateful Christmas, dark evenings and cold nights with nobody to warm your feet in bed. I usually hate this time of year and find nothing at all to be happy about, but for some perverse reason I have received rather more than my fair share of good news of late, which has made me unusually happy and has also paid for most of my Christmas presents.

At the end of November I was commissioned to write an article for a new Condé Nast magazine called Easy Living. It's being launched next April, and promises to be as glossy and glamorous as Vogue, and as practical as Good Housekeeping. To be asked to write my story for the inaugural edition was hugely flattering, but it was never going to be easy to compress the traumatic events of the last 15 years of my life into 1700 words or less. I've never been asked to write my story before, people have always written it for me, and although the resulting articles have been a fair representation of events, I always felt I could do it better.

In theory it promised to be an interesting exercise in the economical use of words. I would have to be very disciplined, and yet expansive, in order to convey the power of my emotions and the depth of my grief. At the same time I would have to inject a tiny bit of levity, in order to let the reader know that I'm not a suicidal misery any more and am actually very happy with my life as it is now. Easy eh?

In practice it turned out to be a very traumatic experience, and I found myself crying whilst writing, which is always a good sign that I'm putting power into my words, but isn't exactly pleasurable. Whilst I was thinking about the article I couldn't write anything else, which explains, if not excuses, the lack of diary entries for my loyal readership. I was also being paid handsomely for the piece, which is why I had to devote so much time to getting it right. I hope I have got it right, and I hope you will take a look at the article when it's published.

The payment for writing the article will keep me in crack cocaine and rent boys for a good few days, but by far the best thing about appearing in a Condé Nast publication is that you get to be photographed by some guy who has just taken pictures of someone really beautiful - you know, the sort of girl with soulful, kohlful eyes, who could do with smoking fewer Marlboro Lights and eating a few more pies. I joked to the picture editor of Easy Living about wanting Mario Testino to take my picture, and she, in all seriousness, told me that he was unavailable, but that I'd get a Vogue photographer, and a Vogue hair and make-up girl.

Fuckadoodledoo. I told her that I didn't want to end up looking like the Scottish widow's ugly sister, briefly described what I'd be wearing, and she said that anything would be fine as long as it wasn't black. I put the 'phone down and danced around the room. I was going to be queen for a day. I was going to have professional make-up, and enjoy the services of somebody who gets paid to make women look beautiful. I was slightly concerned about our meeting place in London - the Photo-Me booth on Paddington station did seem a rather cramped location, but I was sure that they knew what they were doing.

My friend Jemma told me to take a selection of clothes, but I didn't have anything in my wardrobe that immediately shouted übervamp. Jemma loves shoes so much that she will sometimes drive home from a shopping trip with a new pair of sling-backs sitting on the top of her dashboard, so she can admire them all the way home. Her clothes suggest a certain style and sophistication, my clothes mostly suggest short-term memory loss, aggrophobia and a stubborn refusal to get with the programme. Undeterred, I took some of my favourite items and hoped the people from Vogue wouldn't laugh at me when I tried them on.

I met the picture editor at the location and tried not to squeal with delight at the impending make-over, but I'm afraid I was at such a pitch of delirium that I allowed my party-girl self to emerge and take over. My party-girl side comes out when I am outrageously happy, and she soon made herself known to Zoë, the hair and make-up girl. I told Zoë that I wanted a look that was somewhere between Jordan and Joan Bakewell. She laughed, and from that point on we were both laughing so hard that my make-up was running off quicker than she could apply it.

I was so happy. So happy to be in such a wondrously privelaged position; so happy to be sitting in a swanky house in London being preened and primped with powder brushes that have glanced across the cheeks of stunning models, and mascara that has graced the fluttering eyelashes of bewitching fashionistas. I don't pretend to be a great beauty, so there wasn't much poor Zoë could do for me except paint over the cracks and slap on a bit of lippy, but she did it superbly well and I ended up looking nearly as sexy as Joan Bakewell and the intellectual equal of Jordan.

It was all over way too soon, but Zoë has given me her card and has promised she will do my make-up when I get married. All I have to do is supply an industrial bag of Polyfilla and a couple of big trowels.

Talking of which, what is it with women nowadays? I think we should learn to love the faces we have and not spend shed-loads of money getting facial paralysis and grotesque, hornet-stung lips. Laughter lines suggest a happy life; smooth eyes and perfect cheeks suggest too much free time, no sense of humour and a bland and boring existence. A few weeks ago I watched in horror as Sarah Freguson tried to execute a relatively easy facial expression on G.M.T.V. She just couldn't do it. Her face was completely frozen, and all she was able to manage was a wild-eyed stare and a tiny movement of her mouth. The rest of her face was totally immobile and it left me wondering just how much she'd paid to look like a Stepford wife with faulty wiring. I visited my parents at the weekend and commented on the wonderful smoothness of my mother's skin. Her face is almost completely unlined, despite years of sunbathing, and the stress of bringing up four willful girls, and I can only hope that my skin looks as good when I'm her age. Bah Humbug. Botox is for dummies.

I will finish this bumper Christmas diary entry by talking about my other great piece of news. I have been asked to go back on Simon Mayo's show on Radio Five Live, to talk about what's been happening to me over the last year. I am hugely flattered to be asked and I can't wait to tell him all my news. My only regret is that I have no stories of great romantic encounters with which to regail him, but I still have betwen now and January 11th to find a man, which may seem like a hopeless task, but stranger things have happened. I'm sure Sarah Ferguson would raise an eyebrow at the thought of me being finding a man at such short notice (that's if she could actually engineer any movement in that startled mask she calls a face) but I'm not going to be deterred just because I've been a total failure for the last 7 years.

If you want to hear all about it, then please tune in to the Simon Mayo Show on Five Live at 2.00pm on Tuesday January 11th and I'll tell you everything.... I have to go and clean my house now, and tend to my poorly daughter, so I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I've made in the name of keeping my readers happy. Once the house is clean and Rosie is feeling better I shall endevour to write some more...


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