Oprah diet will end in tears

It's risky - and rather grubby - to share your financial secrets with others

- Marcus Padley

In “the good old days”, there was no TV, no internet, no reality shows, no Netflix, no Stan, no Kayo, no The Mandalorian (the horror!), just sexism and billiards. In the good old days, after dinner, the men would retire to play snooker and talk business while the women remained at the table to gossip about less important matters. This was the way.

And how has this post-dinner tradition progressed? These days, after dinner, we turn on a reality show where the celebrity apprentices have to lose weight, cook, build a block of flats, play with Lego, be drug tested, be breathalysed and evade an international border patrol on the way to their own marriage to someone they’ve never seen, in the nude, in the jungle while all the time being criticised and pilloried by unidentified, intolerant sloths on social media.

Oh, for the “good old days” and their routine post-dinner collectives which, despite their sex-based memberships, served as an important but now absent forum to share private matters, something we don’t habitually do anymore.