Now listen to me, this is all in a single issue of the London Times Saturday colour magazine, which I usually flick through like shuffling the cards before dealing, glimpsing fashion items and stunning holiday vistas in a blur of whirring pages… But, boy, today, I am glued not to one but to two articles with the old eyeballs poking out of my face like the proverbial brass cannons. The first by Caitlin Moran, ‘Am I really an attention-seeking egotist? Do I deserve abuse on Twitter?’ It’s a hilarious piece of angst about her very own ‘half-arsed internet campaign’ to put into motion (at a time she was on holiday, and not realising the launch would coincide with the announcement of the new Dr Who) a one day Twitter strike in support of several highly publicised ladies who were suffering a dragons’ pee of abuse onto their heads, and more private parts, because of a campaign to place a historic lady’s face on a banknote…  

And that’s only the entrée…

Article two – skipping the ‘At home with Steve McQueen', stroking ponies and skipping over sun-drenched lawns’, is the hum-dinger, the bobby-dazzler… Rhys Blakely meets Sylvia Day, suburban housewife turned multimillionaire erotic novelist, who has just received an eight figure advance – ahem, yes, you have to think about that fairy tale term, eight figure advance – from Penguin US for her next two books. You are obliged to sit back and maybe even to write it down, all of those noughts! – like something in excess of nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine kind of figure (I might be getting somewhat lost here). More than J K Rowling’s recent advance, more even than Bill Clinton’s $15 million memoir.

I'm looking at Sylvia's smiling face. I'd be smiling too if I were her. You wouldn't be able to find my ears because they'd be lost in my grin.

Darn and Plastic! Go Sylvia! You ladies have this market in your purses.