JAN MOIR: If Madonna looks in the mirror and likes what she sees, surely that’s all that matters?

Following criticism of her appearance at the Grammys, Madonna is angry that everyone thinks she looks like an alien and has accused her detractors of ageism, sexism, misogyny and just not getting her in the way that she wants. Bitch, she’s Madonna.

‘The world is threatened by my power and my stamina. My intelligence and my will to survive,’ she said, as if she had just crawled out of a wrecked building in the Turkish earthquake, flicking concrete dust off her cleavage instead of just back from the skin-plump clinic after being freshly injected with koala placenta, or whatever it is that she does to keep herself looking as smooth and unwrinkled as a peeled dinosaur egg.

Then she had a good old moan on Instagram about ‘a world that refuses to celebrate women past the age of 45’ and a culture that ‘feels the need to punish’ women if they continue to be ‘strong willed, hard-working and adventurous’.

Excuse me. That was about five minutes after 73-year-old Bonnie Raitt won the Song Of The Year Grammy at the same ceremony — plus two other Grammys for her new album — which seems to negate that argument.

Or does it enhance it? In refusing, or forgetting, to celebrate Raitt’s win, Madonna was doing the exact thing she was accusing others of; treating older women as irrelevant leftovers.

Following criticism of her appearance at the Grammys, Madonna is angry that everyone thinks she looks like an alien

In refusing, or forgetting, to celebrate Raitt’s win, Madonna was doing the exact thing she was accusing others of; treating older women as irrelevant leftovers

Perhaps she was just too busy praising gender warriors Sam Smith (non-binary) and Kim Petras (transwoman) for making Grammy history by performing at the event, while ignoring Raitt’s triumph as the oldest woman in Grammy history to win the Song Of The Year award. 

This irony is not lost on me. And perhaps neither on Bonnie, whose first rodeo this is not. In an illustrious career spanning half a century, she has won 13 Grammys and sold millions of records, but after beating Harry Styles and Taylor Swift and being ignored by Madonna, she was described online as ‘an unknown blues singer’. She must have thought to herself — why do I bother?

Oh the young can be so cruel, can’t they? So very, very cruel and unforgiving. ‘Madonna looks like a Masked Singer costume called Outer Spacey,’ said someone online, while others changed the lyrics of her hit from Like A Virgin to Like A Surgeon.

But whether you think she looks beautiful and brave or ridiculous and sad, what is the alternative for a woman like Madonna?

Maybe the unretouched reality is a worse frightsight, for who among us can say if the embellishments are an improvement on the original or not? 

The journey from sex goddess to crone must be a difficult one to negotiate, while the ageing process is often particularly wrenching for those who — like Madonna — were celebrated for beauty and sexual allure in their prime. And honestly, does she really look that bad?

If Madonna looks in the mirror and feels good about herself and what she sees, surely that is all that matters? Well not quite. The 64-year-old has made a side career out of being a controversialist and anyone who strives to shock has an unhealthy dependence on the opinions of others. That is why she is so angry with the criticism and the widespread negative reaction to her appearance. That is why she cannot see Bonnie Raitt, standing right in front of her.

In a way, the two women are a perfect exemplar of nature versus nurture, of Bonnie versus Not Bonnie, of the before and after of cosmetic procedures and tweakments. They represent the should I or shouldn’t I, the pros and cons of the taut cheek against the laughter line, the difference between a life spent looking cheerfully outwards versus one spent looking obsessively inwards.

Whether you think she looks beautiful and brave or ridiculous and sad, what is the alternative for a woman like Madonna?

These two women are a living lesson to us all. There is not even a decade in age difference between them, but Bonnie and Madonna look like they come from different planets; one from Planet Ageing Gracefully and the other from Planet Stretched Balloon.

‘The camera lenses are distorting!’ Madonna claimed, by way of excuse. Well, she has never said that before, not even when she had them mercilessly trained on her underparts back in the Sex book days.

Madonna will always be a heroine to me, even if now only for showing the world the perils of a long-term devotion to injectables and invasive facial so-called improvements. To the kind of beauty journey that starts off well, but invariably leads to a bad place in a bad world.

Just ask Bonnie.

Do all men envy DiCaprio?

One person who won’t be asking Madonna or Bonnie Raitt to be his Valentine is Leonardo DiCaprio. The actor, 48, gets older every year, but his girlfriends stay the same age.

According to painstakingly compiled charts, over the last two decades Leo has been in relationships with eight women, with an average age of 22.9 years.

His last girlfriend, Argentinian model Camila Morrone, pictured, had just turned 25 when they split. Now DiCaprio has been forced to deny he is in a relationship with Israeli model Eden Polani, who is only 19.

Still, I do wonder how many men would never settle down and only date beautiful models in their early 20s if they had the chance. Just all of them, perhaps.

The actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), 48, gets older every year, but his girlfriends stay the same age

There is so much deep unease around the Nicola Bulley case. Not just the continued and unexplained disappearance of this woman, but the public reaction to the ongoing tragedy, including the demand to be informed and even entertained, preferably with hot new updates dropping every hour, as if we were all watching a crime drama instead of a desperate real-life search.

A particularly troubling development has been the way public trust in the police seems to have reached an all-time low.

On Wednesday night, Lancashire Police stopped a search group who had taken it upon themselves to look for the missing woman in an abandoned house near the river. What did they think they were doing? Taking part in an episode of Scooby-Doo? The vigilantes were given a dispersal order and told to leave, while the police have had to issue a warning urging the public not to ‘take the law into their own hands’.

Has it really come to this? Bad enough that tragedy tourists are flocking to the riverbank to take selfies at the spot where Nicola’s phone was found. Worse is that they see themselves as better equipped than the police to take part in the hunt.

Yes, Lancashire Police seem to have made some strange decisions, such as immediately ruling out foul play and failing to seal off the riverbank area. But perhaps they know something we don’t. In the meantime, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt — and pray that all the idiots hampering the search will find something better to do with their time.

Jan Moir said: ‘A particularly troubling development has been the way public trust in the police seems to have reached an all-time low’

The Duke of Sussex hoped to be a guest host of Saturday Night Live, the famous sketch show broadcast weekly on NBC in America. Apparently he was ‘really serious about doing it’ before talks stalled at the last minute, it has been claimed.

One wonders what the stumbling blocks were. Money? Or a belated royal reluctance to be a figure of fun? Whatever.

But Harry couldn’t have made a bigger fool of himself than his wife did, when she took part in a prank on The Ellen Show in 2021; squatting and making chicken noises in the name of entertainment.

One wonders what the future holds for this pair of self-seeking desperadoes.

Can a stint as guest judges on America’s Got Talent be far off? It’s a no from me, Simon.

On a visit to a mosque in London, King Charles took off his shoes, only to reveal a hole in one of his socks.

Holy horrors, how humiliating. Where is the king’s army of needlepeople, darners of the backstairs, ceremonial thread bearers, keepers of the privy safety pin, gentlemen of the darning implement and royal seamstresses when you need them? Nowhere in sight.

I like to think that Queen Consort Camilla spotted the offending item that morning, and tried to alert the King to his impending embarrassment.

‘Of course there’s a bliddy hole in my sock, woman. How else would I get my foot into it,’ was his testy response.

And the rest is history.

On a visit to a mosque in London, King Charles took off his shoes, only to reveal a hole in one of his socks

I try to be positive, I try to think well of him — but is there any official situation in which Rishi Sunak does not look and sound ridiculous? Giggling and wearing a helmet next to President Zelensky was a new low. Doesn’t the Prime Minister have any common sense at all? 

Whether capering with world leaders or crossing swords with Keir Starmer at Question Time, Sunak always comes across like the Chief Vibes Officer in an organic knitwear company. He’s just so unconvincing — a sponge cake of contrivance. He may mean well, but there is something of the Richard Branson about him. And that is not good. At all.

Is there any official situation in which Rishi Sunak does not look and sound ridiculous? Giggling and wearing a helmet next to President Zelensky was a new low

We must bid farewell to the midaxi floral tea dress, which fashion experts have now consigned to the frump dump. Has anyone told M&S? Their stores are still crammed with them, all in hideous colours with perfectly matching hideous prints.

Its demise comes not a moment too soon. Tea dresses had their uses, but made most of us look like truck drivers who had a date with a scone and jam. When I say ‘most of us’ I mean ‘me’. So I won’t shed a tear if these horrors disappear for ever.