Raise a glass to Marianne Faithfull

published 12 February 2016

Marianne Faithfull is not in great shape, but that's hardly surprising, says Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. Leaning on a walking stick and fumbling for her glasses, she told her fans at a concert in London last weekthat she was "not so youngany more". "I am a crock!"she cried.

Actually, she's lucky to be alive at all, given what she's been through. At her lowest ebb in the 1970s, says Moir, she lived rough on the streets of Soho for a couple of years, "lost in a fog of drugs, drink and god-knows what else". Between songs, she even reminisced about her drug dealer, "Spanish Tony", who would bring her heroin during concerts, which she would snort in the loos before going back on stage.

"Do as I do and think about cancer before having a glass of wine," said England's chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, a remark "more likely to make women reach for the bottle than lock it away". But where wouldDame Sally begin with Faithfull, whose whole life "seems to have been barrelling towards this frail junction"? Yet the singer, now 69, is still up there, under the spotlight, so she must be as strong as a she-ox to have come through it all. "What a survivor."

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The daft hoarding of the super-rich

Why do a mere 62 people own half the world's wealth, wonders Caitlin Moran in The Times. Whatever happened to the idea that wealth was supposed to "trickle down to everyone else"? Moran cites the Oxfam report, which argues that as the wealth of the 62 richest people has increased by $500bn, the wealth of the poorest 50% has dropped by 41%. "That's some fairly big stats on it not trickling down. Rather, it's trickling up."

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A great time to be a butler

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The wedding industry is a nightmare, says Vanessa Feltz in the Daily Express. "Every flipping thing from a dinner plate to a rose for the groom's buttonhole comes in ordinary and super-smashing great". While this gives the illusion of choice, the idea is to make you "feel short-changed and wretchedly cheapskate about even entertaining the notion of going with the budget variety".