Alison Rowat's week: We are what we eat; the pupils are revolting; and give that dog a job

On Thursday, while hosting a do at the palace for The London Taxi Drivers' Charity for Children, she recalled one of the last times she was in the back of a cab. This was before she married Charles, when her presence by his side was the subject of what one might call keen debate.

“I don't think he realised who I was, and [he] asked me what I thought about myself,” she told the audience. It could have been awkward, but she said he was “awfully charming” and she gave him a huge tip. Lucky for her, and him, that he was a fan.

The cheery reporting of this encounter was another illustration of the way the Duchess has been successfully co-opted into The Firm as a sort of jolly granny, a bit of a laugh, always ready with advice or a jokey tale to tell. When she wasn’t charming cabbies she was delivering some wise words on diet. In a newspaper interview to mark the official launch of the Royal Osteoporosis Society, she advised girls and young women against trying to be the "Skinny Lizzies" they saw in magazines and on social media. Forget about faddy diets such as "clean eating", she said, and eat butter, cheese, all that good, bone-building stuff.

"You have up until you are about 30 and that’s your cut-off point," she told the Mail. "The trouble is that’s the age you don’t think about these things. You feel like you are invincible and it’s about what you look like. Food becomes about what your figure is like, not what it is doing for your body."

The Duchess, whose mother and grandmother suffered from osteoporosis, knows of what she speaks. While it is to be hoped her message gets across, it might have a hard time cutting through the general din of advice on diet. It comes at the consumer every day, from all sides, and most of it is contradictory. One day carbs are good, the next day bad. Protein is in, then it is out. Should you build muscle to lose weight or cut down on calories?

In general, there is an awful lot of broccoli talked about diet, particularly the whole "clean eating" phenomenon which advocates scoffing whole foods and cutting out all fats, sugar, and processed fare. Like any other regime, when taken too far it can be harmful. Witness the rising number of young people suffering osteoporosis. It is a sort of sick, first world joke that when food is cheaper and more plentiful than ever, people are suffering from the kind of diet-related conditions seen during wartime.

Most of us know what is right and wrong when it comes to eating well and maintaining a healthy weight. The best advice is always the most simple: eat less, do more; everything in moderation; a little of what you fancy does you good. Ma and granny were right all along.

The difficulty is that food, and eating too much of it, is rarely just about food. Sometimes it is about emotion, "eating your feelings" as they say in therapy-speak.

It may be a matter of simple economics: stodgy food is cheap and initially filling. If you are sitting in a cold flat, a hot sausage roll is preferable to a banana any day.

But if we instinctively know what is right, why has a multi-billion pound industry grown up to help us lose weight?

It is partly because, let’s face it, dieting can be one of the most boring, joyless activities known to modern man and woman. Like a salad, it needs a little dressing up, and for most folk that can mean joining a slimmers’ group. Besides providing support and dietary advice, slimming clubs work for one very simple reason: every week someone, ostensibly a stranger, weighs you and takes a note. If you’ve lost weight, terrific. If not, there’s something to aim for next week. Simple. It is not about fat or thin "shaming", it’s about looking after your body as you would any machine you hope to use for the next few decades.

So happy motoring, even if you do call in at the drive-through now and then.

GET SET FOR FROZEN II

CAN it ever be too early to plug a Christmas movie? Not if it’s a sequel to the biggest earning animated film in history. Brace yourselves, mes braves, for Frozen II, a sneak peak trailer for which was released this week.
Such is the interest in Disney’s movie, which is not out till November 22, the trailer was the talk of the social media steamie. Some fans picked up a hint of a bleaker outlook, perhaps a global warming theme. That will delight Donald Trump.
The one thing missing from the trailer was the big song. Let it Go, from 2013’s Frozen (worldwide earnings £931million), written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, won an Oscar on its way to worming itself into the brains of every parent and grandparent in the land. It was so catchy, and played so often, even dogs began howling along.
There was no escape then, and given the Lopez duo are back on songwriting duties for the sequel, it will be the same come November. Don't wait till it is too late: best buy those earplugs now. 

REVOLTING PUPILS

IT should be every pupil’s right to walk out of school to support a cause they hold dear. Discuss.
That is the assigned topic to chew over following yesterday’s walkouts in Scotland and across the UK. At 11am sharp, pupils decided that it was time to take a stand against the uselessness of adults in tackling climate change. If your child was one of those taking part, were you proud, annoyed, or metaphorically high-fiving them for thinking of a way to dog school and appear virtuous at the same time? Why didn’t we think of this?
Parents might take comfort in the notion that their children are part of an international awakening of youth. According to the New Yorker, there has been a year of "extraordinary youth activism" ranging, in America, from marches in support of gun control to protests against police violence.
Whatever your view, the protesting pupils look wise beyond their years when compared to the likes of Rachel Johnson. Sister of you-know-who, Ms Johnson, 53, thought it would be a lark to strip off on TV as a protest against Brexit.  Act your age, love, not your shoe size.

MISS MOLLY

FAREWELL, then, This Week, the BBC late night political show fronted by Andrew Neil, which is to end in July. Bobby Gillespie must be bopping round his living room in delight.
The Primal Scream singer’s icy disdain for Neil and his guests doing the skibidi (it’s a dance craze, daddio), was a rare highlight in a show that long ago jumped the shark (oh, for goodness sake, must I explain that as well? See Happy Days/The Fonz).
This Week was must-see viewing in the days of the Michael Portillo-Diane Abbott double act, but the stand-ins for the Labour MP have never really gelled. 
Neil, moreover, always gave the impression that, though joking away, he was mad as heck at having to wait till Question Time and Newsnight were over before the programme aired. Only when his lovely dog, Molly, was on did I stay up to watch.
Neil will be going on to do other shows, and I trust there will be a space on whatever sofa he ends up on for Molly, too. No reason she should be hounded out of a job.