Seven per cent of British women think about their body shape 50 times a day. Seven per cent? Is that all? What are the other 93 per cent of you doing while we, the dissatisfied, self-obsessed minority, are worrying about the size of our bums? Either some of you are telling porkies or me and my friends make up the entire seven per cent who admitted to being ever so slightly obsessed about their bodies in a recent survey by Garnier.

We are all dieting, thinking about dieting, cutting out this and not eating that all the time. Some are not eating chocolate while others are not eating bread; potatoes and pasta are a no-no for one sect while another only eats food that is green or begins with the letter Q.

The new fad among my friends that is driving me particularly crazy at the moment is the black tea diet. It seems they can eat any old junk they like as long as when I get out my beloved coffee and biccies they can look at me with pity and say: "Could I just have a weak tea, please, no sugar, no milk."

They then let this foul-looking brew go cold on the table beside them while absent-mindedly munching my custard creams before tipping the lot down the sink and leaving the heavily-stained mug to soak. On their way out, they give me advice on how to remove the muddy brown tide marks with salt and a stiff brush.

But are my little band of self-obsessed tea tipplers really that unusual? Well, maybe not. Although 93 per cent of the women questioned said they were not obsessed with their own body shape, they were a tiddly bit obsessed with someone else's.

Garnier's marketing team were aghast to find that women didn't want a coat-hanger figure like Victoria Beckham, we wanted to be curvy like Kylie. The Australian disco diva polled 41 per cent of the vote for best body (i.e. the woman whose bottom we would most like to have), with Welsh actress Catherine Zeta Jones in second with 32 per cent and Vic the Stick bringing up the rear, if that is what you can call her two walnuts in a string bag, with only three per cent.

The way the poll was publicised, however, made it sound as if the women questioned had plumped en masse for a celeb who was, well, plump; someone of the more robust proportions of Dawn French perhaps and not teeny tiny Kylie.

Ms Minogue might be curvy in comparison to a stick of celery, but she is still only about four foot six in her socks and weighs about the same as a bag of Maltesers. The rest of us mere mortals can diet and workout until hell freezes over (or Victoria Beckham has a number one single, whichever comes first) and we will never be able to look like this pocket-sized pop princess. It is just not going to happen.

So why do we bother trying? Why do we drink black tea, obsess about impossible body ideals and deprive ourselves of food that gives us pleasure? The answer is pitifully simple: we think it will make us happy.

Most of us at some point in our lives have told ourselves that the only thing standing between us and the perfect man or the perfect job is a few pounds of excess fat. We convince ourselves that a downward fluctuation in our weight will somehow magically override our innate ability to choose the wrong man and forget every single piece of useful information we have ever learned when confronted with an interview panel.

We equate fat with failure and dieting as the road to success. But starving yourself will not make you happy or successful, it will just make you hungry.

It's a tired old clich I know, but fat or thin we are still the same person. Shedding a few pounds or - heaven forbid - gaining a few does not make us mutate into some hitherto repressed alter-ego. Sophie Dahl was glorious when she wobbled down the catwalk and she is still pretty glorious in her new slimmer guise; and, fat, thin or skeletal, Vanessa Feltz will always be a talentless bore.

We are what we are. It's just that some of us spend far too much time pining for Kylie's bottom.

Updated: 09:03 Tuesday, April 30, 2002