This month's rant is highly topical. Summer's coming, the weather's hotting up (unless you live in England, in which case bad luck), those nice heavy concealing sweaters are being packed away and out come the sundresses and the strappy tops and, Oh God, the bikinis. Yes, ladies, it's time to show that stomach once again. Agh. It would be fine, or at least better, if all my friends were considerably fatter than me and my own over-generous curves were dwarfed by comparison. Why then have I been so monumentally stupid as to make friends with naturally thin people? How could I have been such an idiot? My younger sister is pretty slender but since I know that the effect is achieved by a strict diet of what she considers the main food groups - cigarettes, Diet Coke and frappuccinos - I don't mind THAT much. The thought of the deprivation she has to endure in the pursuit of being a slim size 12 (that's 8 for you Yanks) alleviates considerably the sight of her near-perfect body. It's the ones who eat like pigs who I loathe and detest. Or - even worse - the ones who simply aren't greedy. How can that be? Where do these people come from? And why don't I?

My friend Brice just came to stay. He's French. I met him when he was working in my friend Marie's restaurant - he's a very good cook as well as being a film director specialising in making musicals (despite all the evidence he isn't gay, which I always find baffling). Brice spent the entire fucking time here making (a) tiramisu*, (b) nectarine ice-cream** and (c) pasta with porcini mushrooms and cream***. I am now about a stone heavier and extremely cross with him. He arrived from Paris with a large smelly cheese, two salamis ditto, and, the piece de resistance, a huge jar of pork rillettes. This is basically rendered pork fat with large shavings of pork inside. You spread it on hot toast so the fat melts a little. It's bloody delicious. And despite Brice shoving at least as much of all of these delicacies down his Gauloise-smoking French gob, he is still as thin as a rake. "I always lose weight when I come to Italeee," he lamented. "Even when I eat two beeeg meals a day." I would have killed him and cooked him into rillettes de Brice if he had enough fat on him to make it worth while.

Still, Brice isn't the worst - he's at least appreciative of the curvaceous female form. "Why do you worreeee?" he said as I moaned in misery halfway through an enormous bowl of tiramisu. "Eeet is good to be voluptuous, no? You are a bombe!" (I hope he didn't mean by this that I had eaten so much I was about to explode). The girls are even worse. My friend Jenni has just got pregnant and is - quotes - "looking forward to having a stomach". Well, if I knew you wanted one, bitch, you could have had mine years ago.

I was once cast in a film where I had to play a Cuban spy who had deliberately got pregnant by an Italian cardinal in an attempt to destabilise the Catholic church. The Vatican had got wind of this and were sending agents to assassinate me (obviously) and in the climactic scene I was supposed to unbutton the lower part of my blouse so that the assassin could see my pregnant tummy. Then, of course unable to kill a pregnant woman (la mamma!) the script called for him to throw himself to his knees in front of me and kiss my stomach reverently. The director kept saying: "Don't worry, Lauren, we will make you a little bump to put under your skirt so you look pregnant."

"Filippo," I replied, "I HAVE a little bump."

"No, no, you must look pregnant, we will make you something."

"Filippo," I said gloomily, letting my stomach muscles relax so my tummy stuck out, "look, I HAVE A LITTLE BUMP. I HAVE A BIG FUCKING BUMP, OK?"

"Ah," said Filippo. "Perfect! Exactly what we wanted!"

Meanwhile I am surrounded by girlfriends who lament their ability to put on weight. My friend Patrizia actually, according to her, "forgets to eat". How is that possible? Could someone explain that to me? How does someone forget to eat? Don't you get HUNGRY for God's sake, woman? Are they all just throwing up in the toilets the entire time or do people like that really exist? I love to eat, for Christ's sake. It's one of my favourite things. Since when did that become a crime? Why do I have the metabolism of a hibernating bear halfway through the winter season?

I don't want to be really thin. I saw Gwyneth Paltrow the other day on a street in New York and she looked like a walking corpse - shrunken stomach, big dark circles under her eyes from lack of nutrition. LOTS of Yves Saint Laurent's Touche Eclat being used for those publicity photos, believe me. I read an interview with Ben Affleck, her boyfriend, some time ago when he referred dismissively to Hollywood stars who were so thin that they had stopped menstruating and were covered in downy hair as a result. Clearly Gwyneth was the person he meant. Charming. Thank God for Jennifer Lopez - who is, however, apparently called "Fat Jennifer" in Hollywood. Kate Winslet once said that Jennifer Aniston called her to say that she had a photo of Kate on her fridge. This was supposed to be a compliment - Kate looks great even if she isn't stick thin. I dunno, it sounded pretty double-edged to me. I bet Jennifer Aniston secretly uses that photo as a What-Not-To-Turn-Into illustration.

Actually, the real revelation here is that Jennifer Aniston HAS a fridge. I would have thought it would be much too dangerous for her to keep something like that in the house.

My bikini trauma is less painful here - I can go and sunbathe on the hill above my house surrounded by high grasses where no-one can see my shame. But in a month's time I have to go to a crime festival in the South of France (yeah, I know, poor me, right?) and I want to be able to get into at least some of my summer clothes. Apparently there's a hospital in Switzerland you can go to where they put you to sleep and you wake up a month later as thin as a rake - no muscle tone, but it's a small price to pay. My grandmother swore that there used to be a slimming pill sold by post which was guaranteed to make you lose weight and was very popular until there was a postal strike in hot weather and a pill arrived late and half-melted. Inside, crawling around the box, was a baby tape-worm.

Hmmm. Wonder if they still sell those...

*  for those who don't know, tiramisu is Italian for pick-me-up. Its ingredients are mascarpone (which is basically pure fat), Pavesini biscuits, eggs, dark chocolate, brandy and coffee. It's like a really posh trifle.

**  when I got my ice-cream maker I asked my friend Marie what her basic recipe for ice-cream was. She said a pint of half-and-half and eight egg yolks. (Marie is as thin as a rake but with a famously nice bottom. I hate her.) Terrified, I went off to ask Brice if Marie might not perhaps have been exaggerating somewhat. "But no, zat is rideeeculous!" he exclaimed. "You must use only cream, no meelk at ALL, and TEN egg yolks!" I have stuck mainly to sorbets ever since. These people are scum. Surely they should clearly label their ice-creams so that we know that one portion contains the entire recommended daily calorie intake of a particuarly active elephant? There should be a law about that.

***  ingredients should be fairly obvious, no?

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