Jeez Gwynnie, pass a pastry

Gwyneth Paltrow has graciously left the epicentre of her life (no, not her husband and kids but “the stove”) to bring us her life’s work. Last week she spoke to Jonathan Ross live on a London stage about her cookbook. It is called My Father’s Daughter: Delicious Easy Recipes Celebrating Family And Togetherness.

A mouthful maybe, but she was reticent on stage. She wouldn’t talk about her rock-star husband but did reveal that she would rather do crack than squirt canned cheese into her mouth. Each to their own! Where do you score canned cheese?

Yes, I am being snarky about Gwyneth, but people are. Her greatest gift is not cooking or acting but annoying the hell out of people. If her magnificently dippy website Goop doesn’t get you, then her Facebook page will. Yes she is beautiful and talented, but her penchant for doling out lifestyle advice to us proles is maddening.

The cookbook thing is also weird because Paltrow’s relationship with food is ... how can I put this? Anxious. Sometimes vegan. Sometimes macrobiotic. Sometimes she is “a cleanse practitioner”. Still she bangs on about the importance of eating as a family and then goes all Californian. Or barmy? One recipe is introduced thus: “Could I use some butter and cheese and eggs in my cooking without going down some kind of hippie shame spiral?”

Jeez, pass me a pasty!

But then, Leonardo diCaprio told her about factory farming when he was 19 and her “fave” vegetarian friend Stella McCartney pops up regularly. So she is busy one minute gushing, the next spreading kabbalah in the Hamptons. It’s all immensely privileged, which is why her tips for working mums are a just a little patronising.

By the way, do get a wood-burning oven for homemade pizza. “A luxury I know, but it’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made.”

Many of her tips do make sense. Get an assistant, get your fish delivered, condense your spa appointments so you don’t keep having to go to the damn place. Then you can look like her. If you live on miso soup. You too can flog lemonade and cookies outside your house. Like a pretend normal person. You can give little lectures on gays and the Bible, name-drop Jay-Z and pronounce “Being a Good Dad is Rad”. You can also be told the right way to let your host know of your dietary restrictions before you arrive for the weekend. It’s non-stop fun.

Now she has even started country singing, despite choruses of people pleading “make it stop”. She does know she is annoying - “but I can’t please everybody. All I can do is focus on the people who seem to appreciate what I do and put it into the world”.

Maybe we are simply jealous, but why does she make the rest of us feel so rubbish and why is her lifestyle advice so utterly joyless? Celebrity cookbooks and tips work when we identify with their authors but Paltrow is Hollywood royalty. The assumptions she makes about the good life are unattainable for most people. Even the ingredients for some of her recipes are ludicrously expensive.

Occasionally she swears and she told Ross she drinks non-stop while cooking, but we never imagine her really letting go. We believe that Nigella pours cream down her gullet, that Jamie sits down to a big Sunday lunch and that Delia likes a hot cross bun.

But Gwyneth? Well put it this way, I doubt I will be making homemade vegetable sushi for my child’s packed lunch as it involves asparagus and agave nectar and, er, a peanut butter sandwich is what she likes.

Even in a fantasy world, I couldn’t be Gwyneth - I can’t stomach Coldplay for a start, so that’s a relief for Chris Martin, I am sure.

But I am already exhausted just reading it all. Even arranging a cheese plate seems to involve a trip to New York. I am afraid, though, I laughed out loud at a comment on her Facebook page from a non-English speaker: “You don’t look like you eat something.”

Poor, poor Gwyneth with her preachy love of food. Oh look, here is a recipe she learned at a silent retreat in Japan. “Don’t ask,” she says. Don’t worry, babe, we won’t. We’ve nipped out to Nando’s.

Hugh Laurie is now going to flog moisturiser to men for L’Oreal. The last I heard, he was singing the blues like some embarrassing dad. What is going on? He hardly needs the money. Well, the male menopause takes many forms.

He says he is not afraid “to proclaim that using cosmetics is a very masculine decision after all”. And it’s a very masculine decision to make a fortune out of it. I just wish L’Oreal had also reeled in his old mucker Stephen Fry too. That would really be worth it. - Daily Mail