I arrived in London this evening by train. I took a taxi from Waterloo to my hotel next to Broadcasting House where I have to be first thing for Woman’s Hour. Turning into Oxford Street I had the impression I had landed in Hong Kong as opposed to arrived by train from France. Cheap shops, bright lights, crowds of people; all quite horrible. In fact we passed about 20 shops, none of which I would even want to go into (and I’m not averse to a bit of shopping) let alone buy anything from. I then got to my hotel which appears to be staffed exclusively by East Europeans. Not only that, but Borat seems to have designed my room. It is brown; everywhere. The walls, the cushions, the sofa, the tables, the chairs, even the telephones. This room is so dark Borat’s flourescent g-string would be lost in it. The only thing the hotel has to recommend it is the view. I am on the so-called executive floor - it costs £20 more than the others and is higher up. The view across London is wonderful. I have yet to venture out into the mean streets, but can’t help thinking that it might be safer to stay here, the appalling decor notwithstanding. Down there seems a noisy, bustling mess.

Yesterday I had the strangest experience. I was being interviewed on Radio Cumbria about Ciao Bella and they played a recording of someone reading from the book. There was atmospheric Italian music in the background and I found myself being swept away by the description of Florence. It was most odd, it didn’t seem like my book at all, it seemed to have nothing to do with the thing I created sitting at my desk, it had taken on a life of its own. I suppose writing a book is a little like having a baby. It’s all yours for a while and then it goes out into the world.

That this book made it at all is a miracle. It has had several false starts. It was the book I was always being told as a child that I would write one day. When adults heard how mad my life was (three schools in as many months, mother’s psychotic third husband beating us up, lunatic Italian father in the background whom I didn’t know, stepfather taking mother to court over custody) they would nod sympathetically and say: “One day you’ll write a book about all this” almost as if that made it all all right. When I met my husband-to-be I told him the whole saga on a four-hour boat trip on the Bosphorus River in Istanbul. His reaction was the same, but this time I actually started to write it.

About ten years and over 100 rejection letters later it still hadn’t been published. It wasn’t until I went to Italy last year, to write a book about Italian women, that I hit on the right formula for it; mixing the past with the present. It also helped that by then I had a publisher who believed in me and had already published two of my books. When I got back I told him there was good news and there was bad news. The bad news was I wasn’t going to write a book about Italian women. The good news was I was going to write something better. He took it in his stride.

So Ciao Bella, or Learning with Dante or Roma as it has also been called in its earlier inceptions was born. Which title do you prefer?

I don’t know, do you? Maybe I should ask the odious Jeffrey. All I know is that having written three books, had this last one and the one before serialised in both the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times and had great reviews, the only real money I ever seem to make from my books is when my publisher sells them to other publishers or the papers start a bidding war to serialise them.

Ciao Bella is doing OK. Waterstone’s in the King’s Road has it in the window (or it did last time I was there, I even have a photo) it is on the tables at the front of the shop and I have been droning on about it endlessly on the radio, in the papers, even a TV appearance. So why is the odious Jeffrey on the bestseller list and I’m not? Is it because he writes a better book? I don’t think so. Is it because people don’t want to read a better book? Everyone I know (even strangers) who has read Ciao Bella loves it. So what’s going wrong?

Having spent most of my adult life trying, fighting to get a book published I thought that would be it. Instant fame and fortune, goodbye to my day job. But it hasn’t worked out that way, at least not yet. Oh well, as I heard in that oracle of common sense, The Simpsons, “forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling”.

Like most impoverished authors I found the news yesterday that Jeffrey Archer has signed a £12 million book deal nauseating. The only time I ever read an Archer book I was laid up in a German hospital with brain damage. I had been out cycling when a local Munich resident in a vast Mercedes decided to drive into me, sending me catapulting over his bonnet. I landed on the road, on my head. They kept me in hospital for ten days, during which time I had several brain scans to determine whether I was ready to resume life. I could hardly remember my name so decided to read something easy going. I chose Kane and Abel. I can’t remember anything about it to be honest, but I do remember meeting Archer a few years later at a Shepherd’s Pie and Champagne party in his penthouse flat overlooking the Thames. He was an odious little man, really quite unpleasant, and I loathed him on sight. He struck me as the kind of man who is really only out to get what he can out of people and overly pompous with it. Someone told me a story about calling him the day after he received his peerage and being told there was no Mr Archer at home, there was a Lord Archer. Oh puhleease. I guess you have to admire his tenacity and his will to succeed, but what a wally.

Another day, another kiss and tell about some celebrity chef. Today I read the tearful saga of a waitress Marco Pierre White apparently wanted to leave his wife for. She now feels totally let down as the rogue has not in fact left his wife and she has lost her job. Quelle surprise.

I have to admit that I nearly fell under Marco’s spell many years ago. I met him when I was about 19 in London. He was a flamboyant, loud and entertaining man. By chance we ended up in Oxford together; me to study for my A Levels and Marco to work for the Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. As we knew no one else we would hang out together. He told me dramatic tales from the kitchen at the Manoir. On my birthday he showed up with a beautifully cooked dinner involving some kind of fowl. Sadly I was a vegetarian in those days. I remember him storming into the Oxford College of Further Education refectory wearing a full-length black coat shrieking across the whole room: “Daaaarling, you look DIVINE - but what are you doing in this dump?”

I didn’t give in to Marco’s charms, and rather like the weepy waitress featured in today’s Mail I found that made him even more keen. But we stayed just friends, although we’re no longer in touch. My point is this though - there was a time when chefs would just shut up and cook. Now it seems they’re on a par with pop stars. Why? Why do we care what Gordon Ramsey does to the extent that we have whole TV shows about him? Although I’m delighted to hear my old friend still hasn’t lost his capacity to charm, he won’t be the first chef to seduce a waitress and he certainly won’t be the last. Why are we so interested?

Get back to the kitchen with you, I’m so over celebrity chefs. But next time Marco, cook me something I want to eat.

It’s only when you go somewhere like Amanyara where I have just come back from that you realise how ghastly most of the world is. I am sitting at Charles de Gaulle airport where my flight to Montpellier is delayed, my head full of the colours of the Caribbean and the peace of the resort. We have had four days there of total heaven.

The architecture is Asian, as is most of the staff. Everything is made from wood, most of it imported from Indonesia, and someone has really thought about how to blend the resort in with the countryside and coastline around. It’s the first time I have ever thought that nature could actually benefit from a development. Everywhere you go at Amanyara a smiling member of staff brings you a bottle of water.

There are more places to lie down than to sit, all with magnificent view over the blue ocean or the many man-made ponds that give it such a zen-like feel. We went to look at some of the 33 houses they are building. My husband is writing a piece for the Times about them. Priced from $8 million to $15 million, with annual fees of $120,000, these are not the cheapest houses in the Caribbean. But they are certainly the most stylish. Why can’t the whole world look like an Aman resort? And where is that charming little man with a bottle of water as I sit here at the airport thirsty and miserable after a ten-hour flight?

Whoever said it is better to travel than to arrive had never been to Miami airport. As I write I am in the Amanyara resort in the Turks and Caicos Islands. It is as close to heaven as I have ever been; white beaches, clear water, fresh fish every day but it is only now, on my third day, that I am recovering from the hellish trip. We stood in a queue of about twenty people for over an hour and a half just to get into the airport to be able to get a flight out again. Apparently there is no longer such a thing as a transit lounge. Once we got through we were told by an American Airlines representative that we had missed the flight. We ignored her and ran to the gate where mercifully we were allowed on. This airport security nonsense is crazy. On the way from France I was told to put all my lip glosses, creams etc in a plastic bag. If I were planning to blow up a plane, how would a plastic bag stop me? And the questions…..oh please. Any terrorist with five minutes training would surely know the answers to give to get through. But still at Charles de Gaulle (second only to Miami in terms of unpleasant places to hang out) we waited in line for two hours to be asked if we’d packed our bags ourselves or been given anything to carry on board by some dodgy looking stranger. Why not ask people if they have children/enjoy their lives/think Allah is great or just LOOK at them. Does this white middle class mother look like a terrorist? I don’t think so…..

This is my last day in London before going back to France. I was meant to go by train but, joy of all joys, sncf is on strike yet again so now I have to fly. London has been great, it’s always a good place to visit, but tough to live in. Last night I went with my stepdaughter Julia to see Dirty Dancing - it was OK, but the audience was ghastly. Mainly Essex girls shouting ‘get your kit off’ to the Patrick Swayze look-alike lead. The poor man could hardly make himself heard. But then he didn’t have anything very interesting to say. The best bit about him was his hip movement.