Plastic Betrand as pictured on the original single of ‘Ça plane pour moi’. When he hit European television screens in 1977, pogoing across music stages with a glint in his eye and a flower in his buttonhole, Plastic Bertrand gave no reason for anyone to doubt him when he yelled into the audience “Ça plane [...]

My Child’s Big Fat Birthday Party, BBC1 Photograph: BBC/North One Television /Karen Zetter/BBC I wish I was a kid again. It looks brilliant now, especially if you’re filthy rich and spoiled rotten. The birthday parties I remember involved a few chocolate fingers, a paper cup of squash, those rolled-up things that straighten up and make [...]

Madonna, ‘looking preposterously beautiful’, says Churchwell, in Dolce & Gabbana’s advertising campaign. It seems that older women are being celebrated by our society at last – or so we’re being told. A raft of recent stories have assured women that it is no longer the case that they become invisible once they reach middle age. [...]