As Hillary Clinton gets bitter in a televised TV debate with Barack Obama, the singer Amy Winehouse is frolicking on a beach in the Caribbean with her ex-boyfriend. Who do you think does more to further the cause of women?

Most would probably say Hillary. She was (and some may say still is) likely to become the first ever female president of the US. She strides around making important speeches and leaves men quaking in her wake. Amy, on the other hand, is a drug addict lunatic with a husband in jail and more tattoos than David Beckham.

My view is that women like Hillary do more damage to women’s causes than men do. She has become worse than a man. She is more aggressive, more strident and totally charmless. Just because you’re in a position of power, there’s no need to give up being a warm and attractive (even sexy) person. Her husband certainly didn’t. Here in France we saw a similar change (although not nearly as bad) in Segolene Royal. In the end Sarko outpolled her among women, as Obama has just done to Hillary in the US.

Amy may be flawed and faithless. But she is pure woman. She is talented and successful and behaving badly. In her song You Know I’m No Good she says “Upstairs in bed with my ex boy, he’s in a place but I can’t get joy”. This may all have changed now.

But the point is that women are not fooled by a woman trying to be a man. That’s not what we want when we talk about the first female president. We want a first WOMAN president, not some pastiche of a man whom we hate on sight. If Hillary were a touch more like Amy (or even Bill) we would like her a lot more, chinks and all.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

“Are you a goer?” I overheard a man asking at a party the other evening. The man posing the question was my husband. The person he was addressing was my friend and business partner Mary. I agree that with her tight red dress and hair curly as kale she was looking particularly festive, but I did wonder if this question were appropriate. My normal response would have been to flirt outrageously with the best-looking man in the room, but as our kind hosts were gay, all the good-looking men were looking for equally good-looking men, and not wasting so much as a glance in my direction. I resolved to ask Rupert about this comment on the way home.

“I heard you ask Mary if she was a goer?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I know it looks bad. But there is a perfectly good explanation. I was explaining to her my theory of parties. Parties are made up of two kinds of people: those who want to go home early and those who want to stay late. The problem is, they are normally married to each other, which leads to aggravation. So what I wanted to know from Mary was this: are you a stayer or are you a goer?”

Hmm. Neat explanation. Or perhaps I am getting very French in my suspicions. Here we are all agog at the news of the liaison between Carla Bruni and Sarko. She clearly is a goer. When she decided that she must have Raphael Enthoven, a philosopher, it was of little concern to her that a) he was married and b) she, Carla, was living with Raphael’s father at the time. Along with the usual conquests such as Mick Jagger (while he was married to Jerry Hall) and Eric Clapton, she also dated Francois Fillon, the French prime minister. This is probably not the first occasion that the French president and prime minister have shared the same squeeze, but it’s definitely the first time that the French public have been made aware of it. While we haven’t been at too many parties this season – Rupert and I shared an office lunch - no streamers, no dancing, very little snogging – we have been invited to Christmas Eve with our wine-making friends Jean-Claude and Alexandra in their chateau. Nervous as we are about the police and their breathalysers, I phoned Jean-Claude to ask him what time we should book a taxi for.

I was already quite nervous about this: according to one friend, the French go first to Midnight Mass, then party on afterwards. As a girl who likes to be in bed by ten o’clock at the latest, this is disheartening news. Jean-Claude suggested various times for the taxi, then said:

“It’s all too complicated. You must stay.”

So, it’s official. Rupert and I are both stayers. Although he points out that perhaps it is possible to be a goer and a stayer. I will question him further on this issue. In the meantime Merry Christmas!

I am pleased to annouce that I am incredibly posh. The reason I know this is that none of my friends have central heating. It is a well known fact that the posher you are, the colder your home is. In fact one of the friends I stayed with in London during this visit didn’t even have hot water, so she must be almost royal. Last night I was unable to sleep because my nose was so cold. I’m all for getting into the seasonal swing and all that but do I need to look like Rudolf?

I am now on the train on my way back to France. My final Christmas party was the Daily Mail one. I met Shere Hite there, author of the famous Hite Report on Female Sexuality. I had always imagined she would be rather academic and serious. Not a bit of it. She made Joan Collins look natural.

She had obviously had a lot of work done. At a guess I would say at least one face-lift, lots of lip implants and botox. She looked insane. She looked scary. She looked older than her 65 years. I suppose the rest of us should be grateful to her. Not only because she talked openly and loudly about the importance of the female orgasm, way back in 1976, but because she is a prime example of a truly terrible approach to ageing.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Back in the 1990s, when I was an energetic young journalist covering Russia and eastern Europe, there emerged the phenomenon of the ‘Biznessman’ or ‘Biznesswoman’. These characters, generally male, would huddle in hotel foyers wearing leather jackets and tell me about their money-making schemes. They didn’t make much sense to me, but I assume they paid off. Central Europe has been transformed and Russia seems to produce a new billionaire every day. So, ten years later, I have decided to become a Biznesswoman. I’m not sure that I will wear a leather coat or huddle in a hotel, but faced with a husband who thinks that writing books on wine and water is a money-making scam and children who insist on horse-riding, tennis and piano lessons – and that’s just on a Wednesday – there was no option.

My first ‘bizness’ is probably the one I am most excited about. It is called Renew Retreats. I came up with the idea soon after finishing my latest book, To Hell in High Heels. Never mind hell; I was taken to bed with a kidney infection, felt run down and ready to die. I looked around for a spa retreat that would rejuvenate me and found nothing that I fancied. So today with a few of the most inspirational women I met during my research for the book, including Tina Richards, a top London holistic dermatologist and Anna Cooper, a jet-setting yoga guru and psychotherapist, together with my friend and neighbour Mary Lesault, we have come up with the ideal five-day spa retreat.

Ten lucky women will gather at Le Couvent in Hérépian in the first week of May and be treated to massages (one rather exotic one involving a Kansu bowl and warm oils which I have tried and it is mind-blowingly good), yoga, one-to-one dermatological consultations, nutritional advice and inspirational talks by moi on, among other topics, how to unlock your inner French woman and anti-ageing tips. For more information you can visit our glorious pink website.

The other ‘bizness’ is more prosaic, but may prove more profitable. After seven splendid summers in Sainte Cecile, we have decided to take the children on a Grand Tour of Europe next year. This will include visiting my mother near Rome, my cousin in Stockholm, Bea’s best friend Norrie in the Savoie and anybody else willing to give us a bed for the night. To help pay for this jaunt we are going to rent out the house for the summer. I hope it is a good idea. If anyone you know would like to stay in an old stone farmhouse with a swimming pool and only cicadas for company (as well as Max the cat and Wolfie the dog obviously), you can find out more at www.creme-de-langeudoc.com by clicking this link.

Now where did I put that leather jacket? Maybe I can find a pink one….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

My mother has recently started thinking about ageing. She tells me she would rather be dead than old. It’s a fair point. Having just written a book about ageing I know there aren’t many upsides. One is that the hair on your legs grows at a much slower rate. This is probably not much comfort if you’re a bloke. It also does not make up for no teeth, wrinkles, memory loss and a whole host of other irritating side-effects of age. What’s the point in having sleek legs if your face looks like W.H. Auden’s with a hangover?

I do not fear for my mother. She has always ignored the inevitable and will continue to do exactly as she always has done; that is live life as energetically and eccentrically as possible, until she is either arrested or immobile or possibly both. She is a great example.

Last night I saw another woman who has inspired me and made me less fearful of ageing. Rupert and I took the girls to see Marianne Faithfull in Beziers. She was absolutely brilliant. I am not a big concert-goer. I have been to about two in my life; David Bowie and Bananarama. I was reluctant to go, preferring to be tucked up in bed at 10pm, not singing along to rock songs.

But I am thrilled that we went. The girls loved it. Olivia rather sweetly kept waving at Marianne who sadly failed to spot her. She also didn’t hear Rupert’s response when she said “I hope you can understand me, I can’t speak French.” “Say it in broken English,” he suggested.

I had goose-bumps listening to her sing, thinking about her life and what a woman she must be. She really did “drive through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair” unlike her unfortunate heroine Lucy Jordan.

Marianne Faithfull is sixty-one, almost the same age as my mother. She has lived through drug addiction, Mick Jagger and breast cancer. She has an incredible presence. I felt I was looking at an an icon. There were times when she had to reach for her glasses to read the lyrics. She often took a sip from a mug of tea while the guitarist played a riff. She wasn’t prancing around the stage pretending to be sixteen. But she was having a great time, and so were we.

My point is this. Being over sixty is no excuse to stop doing what you love. My mother knows this and so do I, thanks to her and Marianne.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Stefania Prestigiacomo, minister for Equal opportunities in the Italian government, has come up with ten commandments for female happiness:

* Consider motherhood a value – it is the greatest experience for women
* Follow your childhood dream
* Keep falling in love
* Buy something useless every once in a while
* Take pride in your own beauty
* Do not be upset by your man if he doesn’t notice when you’ve been to the hairdresser – it is his loss
* Do not be envious of important people; they, too, often spend evenings just watching television
* Travel to broaden your mind
* Defend other women
* Smile

I don’t agree with all of them. Number seven for example. Since when did I ever envy anyone who has to go out every night? My idea of a good evening is the apero a grande vitesse, followed by dinner with my husband and children and bed with a good book by 9.30pm. Or watching Grey’s Anatomy.

Number nine is slightly dodgy too - defending other women is just not in our genetic make-up. As a friend of mine said yesterday when we were discussing what makes us happy “nothing makes me more miserable than seeing other women happy.” In France, at least, sisterhood is dead and buried.

And what about men? Their list is a lot shorter, as I saw at lunch yesterday with Leo and his friend Louis, both aged four.

“Mine’s bigger than yours,” said Leo, holding up a piece of emmental to compare with his friend’s bit of emmental.

“No,” protested Louis. “Mine’s much bigger.”

It starts early…….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

We have just come back from Venice where we were invited to the launch of a joint venture between the estate agents Savills and a local company called Views on Venice. We stayed in a penthouse apartment overlooking the Grand Canal. The weather was amazing, sunny and warm, and we walked for hours on end, discovering parts of Venice that I have never seen before.

Another thing I discovered is what I most miss about living in England. I thought it was M & S or Waitrose or Bendick’s Bittermints. It’s not. It’s the girls. We went out for dinner Monday night after the launch party. There was the Savills PR girl Fiona, Rupert, three other female journalists from The Standard, the Mail on Sunday and Country Life (did you know by the way that it comes out weekly? Amazing, I can’t think what they find to write about. Apparently they have a dog of the week column now, is that animals or women I wonder?) and me.

Anyway, we sat down to dinner, ordered vast amounts of wine and had such fun. Having lived in France for seven years I have forgotten that all women are not forever counting calories and refusing to drink more than one half glass of wine. These women wouldn’t drink any less than half a bottle each. And OK you might wake up with a hangover, but all the laughing you’ve done must counterbalance the health threat of the alcohol.

English women are great. They are feisty, fun-loving, generous, warm and just fab company. Even Rupert, who was severely out-numbered, had a good time. I cannot imagine a group of French women having such a riot, and they certainly wouldn’t have drunk their way through four bottles of wine. Topics of conversation ranged from journalism (and how crap it can be, but then you do get to go on trips like this), children, men (and how crap they can be, except for Rupert, obviously) and whether to give up your maiden name when you get married. No is the answer.

Had I been out with a bunch of French women, I may have woken up feeling more clear-headed than I did on Tuesday morning, but where’s the fun in that?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

“Keep it light-hearted,” the producer tells me. “We’ve got a big feature on breast cancer so this item needs to be funny.”

The subject of my discussion on Woman’s Hour today is a new book written by a Dutch woman called Dutch women don’t get depressed. By the end of it, I am. I try a whole host of jokes, like Dutch men being so jolly despite bossy, scruffy women due to high drug intake and French women refusing to wear clogs (rarely in fashion). They all fall on deaf (Dutch) ears. Not even a snigger. The woman has no sense of humour whatsoever.

To make matters worse I get back home to a seriously POISONOUS comment on my blog about my performance. I am apparently snide, xenophobic and smug. And that’s on a good day. “I suppose, however, its all that can be expected from a woman who writes books with such ridiculous titles like ‘Two Lipsticks and a Lover’,” writes the rather bitter Abigail. (Rather smugly I notice she can’t spell it’s).

But I am safe. As I lie down for an afternoon sleep with my ill daughter (I am also ill having been out until 2am which only happens about once a decade, why did it have to happen last night?) she comforts me. “Don’t worry about that silly woman mummy,” she says. “Just go to sleep and pretend like it didn’t happen. I’ll look after you And I’ve got Max and Wolfie on my team.” Abigail beware.

PS By popular demand, here is the ghastly comment, posted on the About Helena section and also emailed to me just in case I missed it:

Abigail Jones

I just listened to a program on Radio 4 Women’s Hour on which you made an appearance - a discussion of Ellen de Bruin’s book ‘Dutch Women Don’t Get Depresssed’ and its sentiment. It is, of course (as de Bruin readily admitted) another example of a ready habit that many people have to stereotype nationalities in a wildly uninformed manner. I can’t say I’m very interested in buying the book or discussing such silly stereotypes, but de Bruin seemed like a pleasant enough woman.
Despite the fact that we were listening a discussion on de Bruin’s book, however, it was your drawling sarcastic comments and performance that really stood out. And not, I assure you, in a positive way. You seem to have an unpleasant obsesion with perpetrating such mindless, crude stereotypes, and some of your responses verged on xenophobic. The one about how Dutch people were happy because they smoked drugs? Embarassing. As for your claim about how women are happier when they believe they look better? I can only judge from the ridiculously smug picture you posted of yourself on this page that you at least are wholly believing that you look ‘good’? Your snappy tone and silly jibes on Woman’s Hour, however, was not the behaviour of a happy woman.
I suppose, however, its all that can be expected from a woman who writes books with such ridiculous titles like ‘Two Lipsticks and a Lover’

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Bea is ill. She has a “baddie tummy” and I mean really bad. Poor little love has been writhing around in agony, her temperature soaring. But the most astounding effect of her illness has been on those around her.

Her best friend and soul-mate Manon spent all day at school weeping. When told by the others at school that there are other children to play with she responded; “There’s only Bea.” Leo spent most of his time by her bedside yesterday, watching her anxiously. Even Olivia, who is normally arguing with her, is upset. At dinner last night she threw down her knife and fork and announced that it just wasn’t any fun without Bea.

I agree it’s no fun. I miss her constant singing and chatting, her weird hairstyles and cool outfits for school. The doctor said she should be better within 48 hours. That was 24 hours ago, although it feels like a week.

Meanwhile a story from Italy about three feuding nuns caught my attention. Relations between the three remaining sisters of Santa Clara in Bari deteriorated so badly that one of them ended up hospital with scratches to her face. The Vatican wants to close the convent. Two of them have left but the third one, a Sister Liliana, refuses to abandon her home of 44 years. She has written to the Pope telling him she will only leave when God decides it is time for her to go. Negotiations are proving difficult as she is sticking to her vow of silence.

If only one of the nuns had fallen ill with a baddie tummy they might all still be friends.

Tomorrow I drive two hours for an eight-minute appearance on Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour. Is it worth it? I think so. I am on air with a woman who has written a book called Dutch women don’t get depressed. Apparently they’re happy because they don’t have much sex, wear dreadful clothes and are under no pressure to be good hostesses. ‘What about Dutch men?’ I want to ask the author. One can only assume they are suicidal.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

I have always admired Aung San Suu Kyi. She is not only one of the world’s most elegant and beautiful women, but also one of the most selfless and determined. Here is a woman who could have lived as a free woman with her husband and sons. Instead she chose to continue the struggle for Burmese democracy her father began. She won a general election by a landslide in 1990 but was placed under house arrest and the military took power.

She has had to watch her sons grow up from afar and make the most difficult choice of not returning to England to see her husband one last time before he died of prostate cancer. The military regime told her she would not be allowed to return to Burma if she left. She has no control over her life, cannot see whom she wishes, they even stopped her playing her piano at one stage. But throughout she has been calm, dignified and pragmatic. And every day she wears fresh flowers in her hair.

The uprising in Burma needs global support. And much as I applaud Gordon Brown for speaking out early sanctions are not going to help. What is needed is for the whole world to put pressure on China and India, two states the Burmese junta seem to listen to. They don’t give a monkeys what we think of them and the military leaders will not be short of food, it is the people who will suffer, as always. We should threaten to boycott the Olympics in China unless the Chinese act now.

The sight of Buddhist monks walking gracefully in unified protest through the streets of Rangoon is moving and powerful. But I fear instead of poise and dignity we will soon be seeing blood and violence. Although monks have a revered status in Burma this brutal regime will stop at nothing to hold on to power; power which it snatched from Aung San Suu Kyi and which the world community must now help her to regain for the good of her country and her people.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007