Good news for overweight people, male and female, lacking in sexual desire. A magic pill is on the way to cure it all in one go. The Medical Research Council's Human Reproductive Sciences Unit in Edinburgh is apparently working on it right now. This drug will be better than Viagra, because it doesn't just get the body going, it also gets the brain up for it. When tried on female marmoset monkeys and musk shrews, it worked a treat, leading to tongue-flicking, eyebrow-raising, rump-presentation and tail-wagging, and better still, eating much less. Bad luck on the shrews and monkeys - scientists had to inject this stuff into their brains. But now they can stick it straight into the bloodstream. Next step, hopefully, will be pill form, and then we can have it. Or why wait? People with other conditions such as diabetes inject themselves, so why not all of us? They thought at first that it would only work on women, but no, it works on men too. Why be a fat capon, when you can be a slimline sex-bomb? Fabulous.
Or is it? I wouldn't fancy it myself. Why make yourself want to do something that you don't particularly want to do? But this is the trouble with sex. Nobody ever knows whether they want it or not, or whether they want it because somebody else told them they want it, or wants them to want it, or because they can't get it, or because someone won't let them have it. What is more enticing than something you cannot have, especially if everyone else seems to have it? Look at all those decades when, in all sorts of circumstances, no one was allowed to do it, which made everyone long for it and go for it. Now we can have as much as we like, any sort, any time, on a plate, we can't always be bothered with it. So we have to be made to be bothered with it, otherwise, what was the point of un-repressing it in the first place?
A couple of weeks ago, Relate reported that men were going off sex. Perhaps that's what is spurring the Edinburgh researchers on - that and the squillions of pounds they'll make if it takes off and gets all the women going as well, to keep up with all the men rampaging around on Viagra. It will help us girls to break through all that emotional stuff - the romantic notions, silver rings, babies, health concerns, fear of unwanted pregnancies and moral scruples that sometimes hold us back - and will bring equality that bit nearer. We too can be out there, bodies aflame, thinking of nothing but sex. And losing weight.
But do we want to be? Years ago, someone wrote a book called Sex is not Compulsory. She wouldn't be writing that now, but how we cheered at the time, and, for some of us, the menopause has been something of a salvation. Once it arrived, my friend Olga lost the annoying desire to go to bed with unsuitable men. She had always been drawn to them like iron filings to a magnet, and what a mess it made of her life. And that was without a magic pill or injection. So give us a break, scientists, go and work on something else. Leave the monkey's brains alone. It isn't worth it.
What a fuss about the royal wedding. I don't really give a monkey's one way or the other. It brings in the tourists. The pale green dresses were fairly tasteful, Hello! paid for it so we didn't have to, everyone looked cheery in the photos, I couldn't see anyone sulking, and if someone wants to give up Catholicism for some strange reason or other, do I care? No. But everybody else seems to, even Rosemary. She was shouting about them this morning. "I'm fed up with them. They should stop when the Queen dies. I want all the hangers-on to clear off. All right, about six can stay: the Queen's all right, the duke good for a laugh, the prince and Camilla can open the odd hospital, but none of this helicopters-to-stag-nights business. It's the arrogance that I can't bear."
Perhaps she is embittered by personal experience. Once upon a time she had a charming boyfriend who Princess Margaret was rather fond of. There they would be, Rosemary and her beloved, at work in the office together, then, at 5 o'clock: Ring, Ring - the palace on the phone. Boyfriend must go at once to entertain the princess. "Any plans we may have had were cancelled, and off he went," said Rosemary peevishly. Her romance came to nothing.
My experience of the extended royal family is more mellow. I once attended a riding course taught by Mark Phillips. What a fabulous teacher he was. I was bottom of the class, but did he sneer? No, not the tiniest bit. Was he supportive and helpful? Yes. Was my experience painful? Yes, even with padded knickers, but not because of the minor royal. I'm sure he's not even on the Civil List. And doesn't his son look just like him. Aaah. And the bride looks just like her mother. Hopefully this romance will last. Unlike Rosemary's.
· This week Michele read The Home, by Penelope Mortimer: "Beautifully written, moving, and funny, but much too sad for me." Michele saw the last half of The Artful Codgers on Channel 4: "What heaven to see the snotty art world made a fool of, but if only the Greenhalghs had had a jollier life. And couldn't Shaun, the genius forger, do community service? I thought the prisons were full."
