HomeBlogs & ViewsBirmingham Mail ColumnistsMaureen Messent

Gender shocker for OAP

IMAGINE the shock of 88-year-old Cathy Yates when she opened the door of her Blackpool home to the female home help she had requested to help her bath. Read

A breeding disgrace

BROMSGROVE-based Mrs Gaynor Jean-Louis does cats no favours. Read

Reality behind the gloss of Billie's call girl drama

SINCE it's unlikely that countless thousands of Brits have become entranced overnight by the thespian qualities of pneumatically-lipped actress Billie Piper on ITV2 each Thursday, it's safe to say the nation is in search of a bit of knicker-lace, rumpy-pumpy and how's your father in Secret Diary Of A Call Girl. Read

Yes it's cruel - but funny

WHAT are we to do when a fat girl, wearing a jockey cap, a black leather coat and jeans straining at the seams, tells us she trained to be a jockey? Read

Don't rush to condemn PCSOs

BEWARE the self-righteousness that has condemned that pair of community support officers who didn't hurl themselves into a deep Wigan pond to go to the assistance of 10-year-old Jordan Lyon? Read

Break up is an old wives' tale

HO HO. Isn't it fun when a couple of girlies square up to each other, claws and handbags at the ready? Read

Mugabe has to go

IT HAS been mooted that our government is reluctant to get tough with Zimbabwe's murderous and corrupt Mugabe for fear Britain stirs up memories of its colonial past. Read

We've nothing to fear from a blended Brum

THE doomster demographers are having a field day. They have told us recently that Leicester, closely followed by Birmingham, will become what they call "plural cities" - those where the white population is in a minority. Read

Innocent or guilty - these two parents have lost a child

THAT little face, periwinkle bright, follows us everywhere. Read

Charlie is no-one's darling

THE defining moment from Diana's memorial service came early. Crowds watching guests roll up cheered when the Queen arrived - but fell silent when Charles came into sight. Read

Of course a child of eight knows right from wrongi

I FELT nervous. My throat was dry and my palms sticky as I tried to remember the errors of my ways for the priest waiting to hear my first confession. Read

Rachel's tears of a clown

OH dear. Could Birmingham have had a worse emissary than Rachel Goldsby, who bawled her eyes out when her family group got the elbow on the X Factor? Read

This express is far too slow, luv

THE gorgeous Nigella Lawson, as full-blown as a late summer rose, revealed her idea of a suitable supper when you have fallen through the front door exhausted from a day's work. Read

Memorial for Diana a right royal shambles

WHO but members of the House of Windsor could have come up with so bizarre a memorial service for Diana? Read

Cowell sees sense on tiny Connie

AN INSANITY nipped neatly in the bud was the stardom of six-year-old Connie Talbot by Simon Cowell. Read

Crocodile tears over culling

YET more stupidity from those farmers who wept as their cattle were culled in the small foot and mouth outbreak this week. Read

Fast ban is so ridiculous

SHEER bonkers is the only way to describe the edict of health bosses in Lothian and Glasgow that, during Ramadan, food vending machines and tea trolleys are to be banished. Read

No seat for Camilla at Di service

HAS the rain addled British common sense? Why, in what should be our balmy summer days, have our movers and shakers become barmy? Read

Something fishy is going on

FROM the Indoor Market in our city comes another August folly. Read

Ballroom's strictly for grown-ups

THE girls have flowers in their hair, blue eyelids and lipstick round their tiny mouths. Read