This week, Jan Moir, in the Daily Mail, and the Sunday Express’s own Lesley-Ann Jones have had pops at the voluptuous cook, whose series, Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen, has been on BBC2 this week.

These female commentators, and a throng of others, have taken exception to Nigella’s camp presenting style and her penchant for finger licking in the kitchen (who doesn’t when they cook?).

She’s also been castigated for saying she’d kill a bear to wear its fur. OK, maybe that one was a pretty big boo-boo. But I forgive you, Nigella.

Still, I’m sure she’s welcomed all of these column inches as they’ve kept her in he spotlight and no doubt helped her ratings (3.6million people tuned in to watch her on Monday, although that dropped to 2.6million on Tuesday).

This kind of publicity is hard to come by (have I mentioned lately that I’ve written a

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After breakfast and a quick shower, I plopped Golden Boy into his pushchair and rushed him off to nursery before I raced on to work.

It was only when I arrived at the office that I realised I had got it all wrong. During our journey to nursery, Golden Boy was facing away from me in his pushchair and, according to new research, that will have undermined his development.

A study carried out by Dr Suzanne Zeedyk from Dundee University found that children who faced away from their parents while in a baby buggy were more likely to be stressed during the journey.

Parents also talked less to the child if they were in an away-facing buggy.

This, of course, is very bad.

Dr Zeedyk said: "If babies are spending significant amounts of time in a baby buggy that undermines their ability to communicate easily with their parent, at an age when the brain is developing more than it will ever again in life, then this has to impact negatively on th

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Thomas Beatie, a man who was born a woman but gave birth to a daughter earlier this year, is expecting again.

The 34-year-old from California, dad to baby Susan, kept his female reproductive organs despite having surgery to flatten his chest when he began living as a man in his twenties.

Now, Mr Beatie’s situation is unusual to say the least but the fact is he and his wife Nancy are clearly keen to be parents.

And I reckon that people who go through the bother of buying sperm from a donor and then getting inseminated are likely going to treat their children right and raise them well.

It’s people who are genuine in their intention and desire to have children that we like to see become parents.

And despite the horrors we’ve read about this week, there are still millions of good parents out there doing great jobs bringing up their kids.

It’s just easy to forget that in a week like this.

I wish the B

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But I never took this career path because I am hopeless when it comes to drawing. Stick men really are the zenith of my artistic achievement.

So when I was asked by the coordinators of Children In Need to come up with a new look for Igglepiggle, star of the CBeebies programme In The Night Garden, of which Golden Boy is a big fan, I was more than a little nervous.

When I found out that my makeover would be auctioned - from Monday - for the charity alongside designs by fashionista Zandra Rhodes (no relation, in case you were wondering), Sporty Spice Mel C and the actress Isla Fisher, a knot grew in my throat.

How on earth was I to compete?

This was the question I kept asking myself t

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This concerned the growing number of British parents heading abroad for medical procedures that will determine the sex of their babies.

Is it me or is this not just plain weird?

I can be a complete control freak, but even I think there are some things that should be left to chance - such as whether you give birth to a girl or a boy.

Just because there is technology available to make your sex selection wish come true, it doesn't mean it should be used.

That's why the treatment is illegal in Britain and many other right-thinking countries (apparently, it's allowed in the US and Russia).

According to one report I've read, it is the parents, for example, of three boys or two girls who have attended surgeries set up by foreign medical clinics to make sure their next baby is of the opposite sex.

I think if you're lucky enough to have two or three children in the first place and

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