HELLO, how nice to see you again. Isn't January a weird month? We spend the whole of autumn getting over excited about Christmas and the party season.

We yearn for the time that we don't have to make excuses for eating our own bodyweight in mince pies and drinking copious amounts of, well, anything. We wish the days away until Santa's going to visit and we plan a fabulous blow out on New Year's Eve. Then before you can Hark The Herald Angel, it's all over, and it's January and the start of another year.

Then we start the next part of the cycle: Why have I put on so much weight? Why did I get so drunk and behave so badly on New Year's Eve? Why, as I get older, does it take so much longer to recover from a heavy session? Why does that never stop me doing it again?!

Now I must say, I was very fortunate to have a wonderful start to this year. I was lucky enough to be invited to go on a Caribbean cruise. I was actually booked as an after dinner speaker on the ship, talking to the holidaymakers about how I became a Loose Woman and my experiences on the show. I had a wonderful time as you can imagine, spending 10 days in the Caribbean when you lot were all struggling through the snow and ice and suffering the lowest temperatures in decades.

The only bit of the trip that wasn't quite so good was the journey home, when we had a delightful eight-hour wait at St Lucia airport. I'm not one to complain, but eight hours on a thin plastic airport chair ain't a lot of fun.Happily I spent the time with the lovely John Ellis who was the Elton John tribute act from the ship. Several hours in, and several glasses of something that looked-like-white-wine-but-tasted-like-paint-stripper later, and I'd whipped John's collection of Elton wigs and glasses out of his hand luggage, and I was drunkenly conducting a tuneless yet enthusiastic sing-song in the terminal. It wasn't big and it wasn't clever, but I had to do something to pass the time!

Now, sorry didn't seem to be the hardest word for our friends at Virgin Atlantic (do you see what I did there?) - they gave all the delayed passengers a whole £10 food and drink voucher to keep us going through those eight hours.

It was a tough decision to know what to spend it on, an insipid panini and re-heated chips or more glasses of paint stripper? Guess what I chose. Suffice to say I rather regretted that choice several hours later when I endured some nasty turbulence half way across the Atlantic. That'll teach me.

The rest of January has been somewhat more normal for me. The usual grind of dieting, work, more dieting and detoxing (it's taken some time to get rid of the paint stripper toxins alone).

Talking of dieting, is it just me or are there a million more diet products than normal being advertised this January? Each year I'm reminded what a bad girl I am for eating too much, drinking too much and partying too much. But this year

every single paper, magazine and TV channel is repeatedly telling me I'm the size of a small Caribbean island myself and that I definitely need their diet pill/drink/shake/bar. And if that's not bad enough, they've gone even further now, and they're also advertising plastic surgery everywhere. So not only do I need to go on a water, rocket and alfalfa diet, but I also need to get a part of my anatomy injected, peeled, enlarged, reduced, sucked out or lifted.

You might have gathered I'm not a fan of plastic surgery. I mean, each to their own, but it's not for me, I just wouldn't resort to going under the knife. I'm just too much of a chicken to have any kind of procedure that's not medically necessary.

The thing is people go too far with it, they start with a little nip and tuck and then get obsessed and can't stop. I knew someone once who had everything lifted so much, she ended up being able to use her belly button to tuck her napkin in!

Note to self - remember to grow old gracefully (or maybe disgracefully!).