The imminent ban on fox-hunting saddens me mainly for reasons of nostalgia. I am far too much of a sissy ever to have hunted: I would fall off my horse as soon as it moved, and cry if the poor little fox got caught. But I am romantic enough to love the Olde Englishness of the hunt: the Surteesian image of pink-coated squires racing across a pastoral landscape. Although I am a total townie, hunting is part of my family mythology. My grandmother grew up on a Gloucestershire farm amid rabid blood-sports enthusiasts. Her father — a terrifying, hawk-nosed domestic tyrant who once bit his son on the leg for forgetting to light the Aga — only allowed one book in the house: Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. The whole family loved hunting, but in a typically perverse country way they also loved foxes. In my grandmother’s photo album there is a picture of a fox sitting on their lawn, nose-to-nose with the family labrador. Her father had found it when it was a tiny orphaned cub, and brought it home for his wife to look after. It became an adored and adoring pet: when my great-grandmother retired to bed for her afternoon nap, it would settle down with her, its ginger nose poking out from under the eiderdown. But the call of the wild proved too strong, and one day it ran away. From then on, whenever they hunted, they were conscious that they might be chasing after their old pet. It didn’t bother them unduly: as far as they were concerned, there could be no nobler way for a fox to go.
I stayed away from the pro-hunting demonstration because I didn’t want to turn into an anti. I am such a reactionary that I always end up disagreeing with whatever crowd I’m in. Last year, for instance, I went to the big anti-war march. I was a determined dove at the start, but by the end the self-satisfied piety of my fellow demonstrators had converted me into a swivel-eyed, drooling neocon. The trouble is, most protesters are so unbearably smug. Consider, for instance, the left-wing journalist Joan Smith. In her Independent on Sunday column this week, Smith poured scorn on the amateur agitators at the hunt protest. ‘One woman,’ she marvelled, ‘told Radio Four that it was her first demonstration. I mean, who are these people? Even if she was too young to demonstrate against the Pinochet junta in Chile or apartheid in South Africa, wasn’t she even a little bit concerned about Third World debt or the war in Iraq?’ Smith, of course, has impeccable caring credentials. ‘From the day I pursued Mrs Thatcher across the grounds of my university campus,’ she boasted, ‘to the huge anti-war march last year, public protest has been part of my life.’ I told you those anti-war marchers were insufferable.
On Thursday I had lunch with the editor of a national newspaper. He was looking a little distracted -– nervous, even — when I went to collect him from his office. In one hand, he was clutching a bank card; in the other, a piece of paper with some numbers written on it. He was, he explained, about to attempt to use a cashpoint machine for the first time in his life. ‘Normally I get my secretary or driver to do it,’ he explained, in response to my raised eyebrow. We found a cashpoint, he approached it with a manful step, and after some initial trouble, when he tried to ram the card into the green flashing light under the slot, he got his money. Afterwards, I felt a rush of tenderness towards him. It isn’t often that one gets to see an alpha male learning a new trick.
My latest vice is watching Living TV, a digital channel stuffed full of televisual pap: filthy, irresistible pornography for the soul. The best — and worst — thing on it is an American programme called Extreme Makeover, in which people who hate the way they look are transported to LA for a month, given plastic surgery, personal training, a new wardrobe and hair and make-up, and then unveiled in a glitzy ceremony before their friends and family. What fascinates me is how normal most of the participants look before their makeover. Many of them are positively attractive; the worst are merely plain, or a bit odd-looking. They have big noses, weak chins, acne scars or sagging bellies — all the usual hallmarks of humanity. Yet when they look in a mirror, they don’t see touching imperfection: they see the Elephant Man. I am convinced that most are suffering from body dysmorphia, the psychiatric condition where people think they are much uglier than they are.
Body dysmorphia intrigues me because my friends tell me I have it in reverse. Even when I look, to the objective eye, downright rough, I tend to see only the good bits. This is the fault of my parents, who lavished my sister and me with so much love and praise that our self-esteem became almost impenetrable. When I was an 11-stone teenager — a septic mass of spots, spectacles and braces — a boy of my acquaintance got very angry with me. ‘I don’t understand,’ he raged. ‘You’re ugly and fat but you act like you’re a supermodel.’ I was astonished by this outburst — until, on reflection, I realised he must be in love with me.
Nevertheless, I am curious to know whether I meet the ugliness criteria for Extreme Makeover, so I have applied to take part in the forthcoming UK series. The application form, available through Living TV’s website, is rather like one of those competitions on the back of a cereal packet. First you have to explain, in 100 words, what makes you so hideous, then give a snappy reason why you deserve an Extreme Makeover. At first I found it characteristically hard to think of things I hated about my looks. I settled for my crooked teeth, my wide, flat bottom, and a giant freckle on the side of my face which people sometimes mistake for a spatter of mud. My reason for wanting a makeover, I wrote, was that I was 33 and single, and increasingly concerned that no man could ever love such a gargoyle as me. I did not believe a word of this sob-story when I started writing it, but by the end I was choking back tears of self-pity. I do hope I don’t get picked; I’m not sure my ego could take it.
Jemima Lewis is a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph.