Celebrate Courage of Selfless Susan

There's a very pretty lady on the front page today. She's only there because she's dead. How terribly harsh that sounds. It's a very cruel thing to say. The incredibly sad thing is that it's true and it shouldn't be.

Today we are all aware of the tragedy facing the family of Susan Taylor, 34, who died trying to swim the English Channel. How terrible it must be to see their beautiful daughter, wife, sister, friend, smiling out from every newstand, knowing that she is only there because they have lost her.

Susan was an exceptional person in every way. She died while helping others. It was her final challenge after years of fundraising . She did her first sponsored swim as a child, managing a staggering five miles. The Channel at its narrowest is 22 miles, but swimmers have to cope with current and tides which means that for them it's even further than that.

It's one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, with tankers and ferries criss-crossing the route. Susan had an even bigger fear ""Coming into contact with jellyfish!" she wrote. It didn't stop her though. She spent many hours preparing and died within sight of her goal. We should stand in awe of her selflessness and courage.

We should also remember that  we don't celebrate these people enough when they are alive. I doubt if any of us would have heard of her had she made it. Far fewer people have swum the Channel than have climbed Everest but can you name any of them other than David Walliams? No, me neither.

French Fancies and a Posh Chef

Nobody wants to have a go at the papers these days, seeing as they are all still smarting from the inquiries and court cases. Give them a break, I say. Not for me to have a go, having passed many a happy hour with the best of Fleet Street myself, once upon a time.
Then I pick up the Sunday Times mag. Pretty girl on the front, teeth deep into a chicken drumstick. A tough call that, looking pretty, beehive hairdo and lips wrapped around a wodge of roast bird. Still, she pulls it off. She's the new Sunday Times cook, Gizzi Erskine. Nice. Great name for a cook, seems right somehow.
Then I take a look at the rest of the pic, and apart from the well-mauled chicken there's no cooked food at all! The table's covered in goodies, but what with the bakewell tarts still in their silver foil cases and the pink icing on the french fancies it's clear thet Mr Kipling has been hard at work but nobody else has.
Why would you do that? Have yourself pictured promoting your new cookery job  with a pineapple, a melon,  some tomatoes and shop-bought cakes? Add a couple of glasses of fizzy plonk  for class, obviously. I'm sure she's a great cook. The recipes inside seem fine, but I find myself tempted by those french fancies, always a favourite of mine. The ST upstaged by Mr K, Times must be hard.
 PS If you like the way I write get Devil Deal by Liz Freeman, FREE on Kindle until midnight Sunday, July 14. Not got a Kindle? Download the free Kindle app and read it wherever you want. It's a fun summer read, plenty of twists and turns and getting rave reviews.

Chimps A Passing Phase

A  chimp made a pass at me in my pink jumpsuit. He thought I was up for it. Cheeky boy. Sad to hear that Louis the star of the PG Tips ads is dead. No one will forget him hauling that piano as the scruffian says: " Dad, do you know the piano's on my foot?" "You hum it son and I'll play it," is a classic.
They don't do tea parties at the zoo any more or dress them up in hats and pants for TV ads. That has to be a good thing. Watching them hang about listlessly in our zoos is another matter. A chimp can work out how to get a peanut from the bottom of a tube far faster than most humans would manage it.* Are they bored out of their big brains?
Look into any chimp's eyes and a cousin stares back. In 100 years will we look back and be ashamed at what we did to these amazing animals?
*He sucked up water from his drinking bowl and spat it into the tube until the peanut flloated to the surface. Too clever for comfort.
PS If you like what I write please get my book Devil Deal by Liz Freeman on Amazon. It will be free for a few days and then priced at £1.53, with half of the net profit going to medical research. Thanks

Our Debt To Truth Tellers

Today more than ever I am proud of our newspapers. It's time to shout their praises after the slagging off they have endured over the past few months. Bad behaviour of a few, heartache for some, has had our unmatched free press teetering at the precipice.
We may still topple over. That would be the biggest tragedy of all. Today the Sunday Times has won a victory against evil and corruption that was allowed to flourish unchecked for years. People who fought back were silenced by threats that left them fearing for their lives.
It took dogged journalists to put themselves and their loved ones at risk. They believed it was worth it. Only a few policemen showed the same courage as their bosses backed down before the terror that was David Hunt. Today we should all be proud of the Sunday Times, Michael Gillard, Peter Wilson and DC David McKelvey, along with the other brave men who supported them. They are our finest on the front line. We owe them.

Devil Drug or Miracle Worker

A miracle worker or a killer - opinion is divided over Roacutane. Parents are worried sick today after the tragic suicide of sixteen-year-old Jack Bowlby, nephew of famous racehorse trainer Jenny Pitman.
Jack confessed to "very dark thoughts," before he hanged himself. He had stopped his drugs for bad acne, before starting again. A talented rider, he wasn't bullied, although friends admitted he was, '"the brunt of many jokes,"
Par for the course in most schools. Jack will have been hyper-sensitive anyway, even without the effects of the drug. Acne makes kids like that. My daughter took Roacutane to clear her spots. When they finally went, back came her confidence.
 Suicide was a serious concern, even though her skin specialist had prescribed Roaccutane for 30 years with no problems. As he said, acne makes young people extremely depressed anyway. Being sixteen is hard enough without spots that scar your face and bleed through the shirt on your back.
Jack's death is a terrible loss. The pain of his family is beyond the imagination of most of us. Yet their suffering should not blind us to the potential of this drug, which has transformed the lives of so many others.
PS I'm raising money for medical research through  giving 50% of profits from my comic thriller Devil Deal by Liz Freeman, £1.53 on Amazon ebooks. Many thanks.

School Payout For a Lucky Few

How much is little Sam worth  then? Does he get a fiver, a tenner or nothing at all? Most kids at my girl's last school will get nothing. Apart from a dictionary they will never open. What a system! It causes grief every year as parents wonder why their little darling is so undervalued.
Now cleric Rev Hugh Rayment is saying prize giving is wrong, because it celebrates the success of a few while others are "left with the gently corrosive sense of not being  quite good enough."  He's right.
 I totally agree with him. My girl couldn't get any cash - she  joined the school in year four, too late to qualify. So that was fine. For others, the issue was much more visceral. It hurt them deeply that another child was worth more money than theirs. Silly but understandable.
No one could understand why the cash was given at all, or why it could not have been divided equally among all the leavers. The Head never explained.  It soured the last day at junior school for almost everyone. Such a shame.

PS If you like what I write please get my book Devil Deal, Liz Freeman, an ebook of the week. It's a thriller with funny bits and I've priced it at £1.53 on Amazon so that I can sell as many as possible and give half the profits to medical research. A cause close to my heart,  so thankyou  everyone.

Savvy Paris Shows the Way

The skinflint in me is just loving the French right now. They are turning off their lights at night and saving themselves 200 million euros a year and enough power to supply 750,000 families.
It's a brilliant idea - just turn it off when you leave. Office blocks will have an hour after close of business to switch off or face fines. So Parisiennes will not be seeing those glittering towers and wondering how much that is putting on their bills.
It all comes down to the rest of us in the end, because they all pass the charges on down to the little man. Some people are objecting, saying that the capital's reputation as the city of light will be damaged. Maybe. We'll all just call it the city of sense instead.