The nature of the beast

Philippa Kennedy

• Last Updated: November 11. 2009 3:50PM UAE / November 11. 2009 11:50AM GMT

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore Larry Busacca / Getty Images / AFP

The cougar that roared

Demi Moore wonders, slightly disingenuously, why she has become a poster girl for cross-generational relationships. “Don’t call me a cougar,” she says. She would rather be known as a puma.

Frankly, it’s all semantics – two names for the same animal, which is also sometimes called a mountain lion. One definition describes all three creatures as “capable stalk-and-ambush predators that pursue a wide variety of prey”.

At 45, Moore is a stunning woman who has caught herself an equally gorgeous younger man. The 15-year age difference could have been embarrassing. The rule of thumb in some western cultures for the age difference in an intimate relationship is “half your age plus seven”, which in this case is six months out.

So far Moore and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, 31, have managed the age thing with dignity, enough at any rate for many an older woman to cast a lascivious eye on a younger man. The nickname “cougar”, for an older woman with a younger man, has redeemed a breed that used to be written off as “child snatchers”, “cradle robbers” or “sugar mummies”.

For many women, falling for a younger man is an excuse to spend money in an attempt to keep the ageing process at bay. With the help of plastic surgery and beauty spas, it can work for a while. Clothes are part of it and the danger of looking like mutton dressed as lamb is always present.

It is, however, only a matter of time before the age gap begins to become more obvious. An 80-year- old woman tripping along on the arm of a 65-year-old man is less alluring than a 45-year-old with a man of 30.

It’s hard to be judgemental about Moore and Kutcher when the relationship is obviously working. Personally, I’d feel too embarrassed, even if I was single, to go out with someone so young. You just know that people are thinking “silly old fool”.

And yet when you look at the likes of Moore, Joan Collins and Barbara Windsor and see how good they look for their ages you can’t help wondering who’s the fool here. Joan Collins’ stock reply when asked about the 32-year age gap between herself and her husband, Percy, always makes me laugh. “Well, if he dies, he dies,” she says.

Follow that example! Time for Dubai’s cabs to look to London?

A scheme by the RTA to monitor the performance of taxi drivers in Dubai is welcome. In the two years since I’ve lived here I’ve mostly found the service excellent. I’m registered with Dubai Taxis and they arrive promptly, with well dressed and polite drivers who know their way around. But recently, with taxis that you pick up on the street, there seems to have been an influx of drivers who have just arrived in the country and haven’t a clue where anything is.

One admitted to me last week that he flew in from Kerala a fortnight ago and the only landmark he knew was the World Trade Centre. Luckily I knew where I was going so it wasn’t a problem.

Later in the day, however, a friend visiting from Spain got into a taxi at 5.30pm at the Mall of the Emirates. She didn’t arrive at our villa in Jumeirah 3 till 7.20pm, a distance of a couple of miles that should take 20 minutes at worse. The driver kept getting lost, going around in circles and didn’t even know where Safa Park was, one of Dubai’s better known landmarks. To give him his due, the driver was apologetic and eventually found his way to our house more by accident than design, but it does make me wonder about the procedure for licences. London cab drivers spend a year riding around the city on bicycles getting to know the streets before they get their licence. It’s called The Knowledge and it might something to be considered here.

Memo to Gordon Brown: the word processor is your friend

There is something to be said for a prime minister who takes the time to write a letter of condolence by hand to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. To be fair to Gordon Brown, it was a well-meaning gesture to write to Jacqui Janes the mother of Grenadier Guardsman Jamie Janes, who was killed by a bomb last month.

The trouble is that his handwriting is appalling and misspelling Mrs Janes’ name was sloppy, to say the least. The combination of the names “Jamie” and “Janes” should have had the radar flashing. It’s too easy to get the letters “m” and “n” mixed up, especially if your writing resembles that of a dyslexic doctor penning a prescription in the dark. And before I get e-mails of protest from the medical profession, my father was a family doctor and I had a lifetime of deciphering his letters.

I was always told that handwriting that slants backwards such as his is dodgy and denotes someone who can’t be trusted. It’s an old-wives tale, but I’ll bet that thousands of people seeing the letter will be thinking the same thing.

Brown’s wife, Sarah, is in the PR business so she of all people should find a tactful way of telling the old man to put away his fountain pen. He can write a short note at the bottom and sign it, but forget the full-blown handwritten letter, no matter how thoughtful he thinks it looks.

Even giving him the benefit of the doubt on the number of mistakes he made – 25 according to Mrs Janes – the impression is not good. There’s no point in blaming the fact that he lost his eye in a rugby accident as a teenager because his handwriting would have been well established by then.