Flag down your friendly cabbie

I do think London cabs are expensive when compared to other cities but still I persist in taking them. Here in the dog days of the recession, when hailing one feels excessive, I've filed the expenditure under a different category in my head: "entertainment". Black cabs equal black humour - and £12.50 for a bit of laughter is money well spent.

As well as being funny (sometimes unintentionally), black cab drivers are also fonts of knowledge. Since Christmas alone, I have procured the number of a really good builder, found out where to buy the cheapest bacon sandwich in town (a cab hut on Kensington Park Road - cheers, Mark) and been schooled in how to get my daughter into Camden School for Girls (I can't divulge the means, and besides, she is only two).

Then there was the journey where the driver started reciting poetry - his own composition, of course. A week later, a self-published book of his poems turned up on my desk at work, and while it was hardly Blake (actually, it was a bit Blakean, but with a dose of William McGonagall thrown in), it was a nice gesture. Yesterday, a driver told me that in 30 years of cabbing, his back seat had never been as empty. Support your friendly cabbie before it's too late.

* Cab drivers refer to January as "the kipper month" but women know it better as "the porridge month". Determined to lose the muffin top yet unable to forego a hot breakfast (fruit salad is nobody's idea of fun in January), we turn, en masse, to porridge as a low-GI alternative. But after a week of smugly shovelling down Oat & Granola Pots from Pret, my friend Jane nearly had a coronary on learning they had 519 calories apiece. News that sandwich chains are to display the calorie content of their food is welcome: until then, best sow your wild oats at home, where at least you can ensure the milk is skimmed.

* Scanning coverage of Kate Moss's birthday celebrations, it's hard not to come away with the idea that some of Britain's moral arbiters feel that a woman should confine herself to the sofa as soon as she hits 30. People have been dying to write off Moss, below, as a wrinkled old has-been for the past 10 years: that she is 35, still enjoys a party and still makes a fortune from modelling seems to stick in their craw. Granted, Kate might not be the fresh-faced girl she used to be, but neither are her fans. In a world obsessed with youth, Kate's longevity should be praised, not buried.