I've got quite a lot in common with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Not the body. Nor the face, more's the pity. Not the childhood in Swansea, and certainly not the multi-millionaire husband. No, the thing about CZJ and me is that we obviously like our grub. Beautiful as she is, you only have to take one look at her to know that each day is a battle with the fridge door.
I know this because kindred spirits recognise each other, like freemasons or drivers of VWCamper vans. I suspect that Catherine, like me, has a large lass within, ready to break free at the first sign of exuberance with the sugar spoon. We've both got a touch of the Tarbucks, and only by a process of constant vigilance can we hope to pour our thirty-something selves into Oscars frocks (her) or something inappropriate from Top Shop (me).
The bummer for CZJ is that she lives in LA, a city where calories are more dangerous than drive-by shootings. I fear that British girls simply aren't designed to achieve the kind of size-zero-superskinny-hold-the-fat bodies you find in Hollywood. To get within coughing distance of a size eight ,we must fight every step of the way. Just ask Kate Winslet. What hope for us when British recipes begin: 'First take your fat. Rub into flour/eggs/suet,' while Californian recipes start: 'Take one cup of arugula. Wash in Evian'? Americans (the ones from the coast, not the ones from Idaho) have dieting built into their gene pool, along with good teeth and a poor grasp of geography.
It's a great cultural divide, and it puts our native talent at a distinct disadvantage over in LA. Stodge is in our blood. In Swansea, as in any British town, you can still find bakeries selling robust buns, sturdy sausage rolls and those fat, tubular doughnuts, slashed across the belly and filled with foam cream and jam the colour of arterial blood. Show that to a Californian and they'd think it was something dead. Or menstrual.
Oh how I'd love to see Jennifer Aniston and Calista Flockhart marooned in Cardiff for a year. Within months, they'd be shopping at Evans, drinking Bailey's by the pint and sighing 'ooh I shouldn't' while reaching into the Luxury Biscuit Selection. I reckon that CZJ retains a burning childhood passion for Eccles cakes, or treacle tart and clotted cream - something she keeps under control by sheer force of will, and the promise of the next few million if she squeezes into another leotard. And yet the truth will always out. Usually when up the duff. During pregnancy, a woman's will to fight the fridge goes straight out of the window, along with her sexy pants and her ability to stay up much beyond EastEnders. You won't stay a size 10, even if you live on satsumas and sugarsnap peas.
So, to hell with it and bring on the buns. When pregnant with her first child, Zeta-Jones lived on steamed puds and pizza, and consequently put on a startling 50 pounds. Which, curiously, is exactly what Calista Flockhart weighs! Just imagine loping around Beverly Hills with Calista attached to your front like a young baboon. Hideous. Mind you, she dropped the weight fast by employing the twin pillars of Hades - the Atkins diet and the early-morning treadmill. And so, in Chicago, she looks utterly, droolingly fabulous in stockings and a Louise Brooks bob. But now, six months into her second pregnancy, our heroine is yet again in the pudding club. Despite hiring a nutritionist, despite daily Pilates, despite telling friends 'I am not going to let myself go again', CZJ is already three stone up. That's almost a Calista and there's still months to go! Good on her, I say. Pregnancy is the on time in a woman's life when she can let it all hang loose. She can wear enormous baggy cardigans and forget to wax her legs. She can pig out, and say the doctor prescribed it. I know this because I too am pregnant with my second child, and I too spend a fair portion of each day with my nose in the fridge. I like to think, as I gently balloon, that there's something warm and alive about a woman who enjoys her food.
The Calistas and Jennifers of this world may look great in small trousers, but they reek of denial, of appetites unexplored. By contrast, the glorious gorgeousness of CZJ is that she looks as if she knows what to do with the cream jug at teatime. Of course, there is a crucial difference between her and me (excluding for a moment the body/face/cash combo): it is far easier to be plump and pregnant in Hammersmith than it is in Hollywood.
The bloke at the newsagent barely even looks up when I walk in, let alone phones the National Enquirer to sell pictures. So spare a thought for Catherine at the final weigh-in. At least you and I can put on a whole Calista without the world having something to say about it. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some cake to attend to.
