WHAT a relief it is to learn that Halle Berry and Sharon Stone will forever be safe from the surgeon's knife.

Despite their advanced age and obvious decrepitude, the plucky stars of the new movie Catwoman have both taken advantage of the film's British premiere to pour scorn on their industry's obsession with age and beauty.

Catwoman is a film about the pressure on Hollywood actresses to look youthful.

Sharon Stone's character is an ex-model in search of a magic cream to prevent ageing, and Halle Berry, in the title role, plays a woman who used to work in a cosmetics factory.

Berry, a former Bond girl now 37, said the vogue for plastic surgery was turning out a legion of 'frightening' identikit faces.

"It's really insane," she said, while Stone, an ancient 46-year-old, added that she would not be going under the knife even if it cost her lucrative film work.

"I'm not big on plastic surgery," she said.

I applaud the courage of the film-makers in choosing two Plain Janes such as Berry and Stone to condemn the shallow nature of Tinseltown.

Their bravery is overshadowed only by that demonstrated by Halle and Sharon themselves in refusing to refresh their fading looks.

I hope the girls will use their considerable earning power to help out those less gorgeous and less principled than themselves.

I promise not to go for the identikit Barbie look.

Until Shazza and Hal stump up the readies I suppose I'll have to just count my blessings. Because it seems that if I didn't have such a busy life, things might be so much worse.

I had always blamed the stresses and strains of my life (two surly cats, one stroppy bloke) for putting years on me and causing the bags and wrinkles that make customs officials do a double-take when they look down at my nine-year-old passport photograph, then up to me in my full three-dimensional glory.

But now scientists reportedly reckon stress actually makes you look younger, not older, thanks to some hormone that has too many syllables to mention.

Guess what, this hormone (DHEA-S for short) gives you a better memory, an improved mood, more energy, more supple skin and a trimmer waistline than you could hope to have if you had never been put under pressure.

Thank you, Dr Charles Morgan of the U.S. National Centre for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It's now clear that while I may be cracking up mentally, I should be even more of a physical wreck if it wasn't for all that lovely stress.

Can I be the only person sick to death of hearing at the weekend what splendid weather we were all enjoying?

As I chomped morosely on my bran flakes and gazed out at the bleak grey clouds, the TV and radio were falling over themselves to tell me all about the sun supposedly cracking the paving flags outside.

And when lunchtime came around with nary a glimpse of blue sky, the weathermen were all smugly harping on about highs of 28 degrees as though personally responsible for bringing summer back to good old Blighty.

I don't know about you, but it took till about 2.30pm for my little bit of North Yorkshire to feel any of the heat.

It almost made it a pleasure to hear that the weather was about to break, and to see the thunderstorms gather.

Strange, though, how when the forecast's bad, it's generally proved right.

Updated: 11:15 Wednesday, August 04, 2004