Praiseworthy deeds

Philippa Kennedy

• Last Updated: May 20. 2009 6:38PM UAE / May 20. 2009 2:38PM GMT

There’s something quite sweet about the former pop star Peter André, aka Mr Jordan, aka Mr Katie Price. He’s not the brightest shilling, but his puppy-like devotion to his wife, their two children and her severely disabled son Harvey has been touching in the unreal world that they have created around themselves.

He has allowed himself to be publicly and regularly humiliated by his hard-nosed, silicone enhanced wife, whose eyes reflect all the warmth of a hammerhead shark. Every salacious detail of their life and domestic arrangements has been offered up by way of entertainment in her best-selling autobiographies and in their ongoing fly-on-the-wall television show.

It has made them rich and you can be sure it will continue to do so but at what cost to his self-esteem? Pictures of André wandering disconsolately around Cyprus with his brothers seem genuine. He seems bewildered and upset and if it’s all a publicity stunt, then he’s a better actor than he looks.

His wife is no doubt already planning to sell the exclusive story of their reconciliation to the highest bidder. More fool him if he goes along with it, although he probably will because he misses his children. If he has any sense at all, he will make her sweat a bit before he takes her back.

Perhaps she needs time to reflect on the value of a decent bloke who adores her and is a great father. Perhaps we all need a break from their monumentally tedious lives, but don’t hold your breath.

Elizabeth Adeney’s decision to have a baby at the age of 66 is not likely to provoke a rush of female pensioners to the IVF clinics. The majority of women of that age and younger are content to look after their grandchildren now and then, knowing they can hand them back after a few hours.

Adeney has decided rather late in life to become a mother because she can afford to and because advances in science have made it possible long after nature intended. Now, the internet is abuzz with comments ranging from admiration and amazement that any woman should want to be pregnant at that age to outright condemnation and disgust.

The child, reportedly a boy, will lack for nothing in material terms and will clearly be the centre of his mother’s universe, possibly suffocatingly so. When he becomes a teenager, Mum will be 79. She will be 84 when he turns 18 and 87 at his 21st birthday party if she’s lucky enough to live longer than the average age for women.

Children are marvellously adaptable, of course, and who is to say that this child’s life will be any less interesting, happy and fulfilled than say, a child born to a teenaged single mother living in a council flat or to a “yummy Mummy” in her 30s in a comfortable home with all the mod cons of a nice middle-class suburb.

In some ways, Adeney is a brave woman. She will have to face criticism from any number of commentators for being breathtakingly selfish along with incredulous looks from younger mothers if she ventures as far as the school gates at going home time. People will assume she’s the grandmother rather than the mother and no matter how careful she is about choosing the right school for her son, she will have to prepare herself and him for the inevitable teasing he’ll receive in the playground. Children from all backgrounds can be incredibly cruel as can adults.

Then there are the physical problems: the creaky knees, the aching back and potential illness as she grows older. Nevermind the effect of a hoard of noisy kids disrupting the ordered life of a busy managing director of a textiles company, even if she does have a nanny to help her.

It’s unfair but nevertheless it’s a fact of life that when older men become fathers, they are congratulated and feted, whereas elderly mothers are seen as a bit peculiar. Adeney is a divorcee who doesn’t appear to have much in the way of family backup surrounding her. And while many women in their 40s still desperately trying to conceive may have sympathy with her, there is a big difference between fortysomething and sixty-something.

You have to wonder why Mrs Adeney left it so very late. Perhaps she was too busy making money and has suddenly woken up to the fact that there’s nobody special in her life. What a burden to place on the as-yet-unborn baby’s shoulders. That boy will have to face up to caring for an elderly mother when he should be romping through his most carefree days.

He can look forward to a comfortable inheritance possibly in his 20s, but given the choice, most kids would prefer having their mothers around for a lot longer than that.

It wasn’t until I was standing at the Etihad gate about to board a flight to Dublin that I realised I had left my mobile phone in my car in the Abu Dhabi airport car park. There was absolutely nothing I could do as the flight was closing. After the first few moments of panic at the thought of being out of telephonic touch for an entire week, it felt strangely liberating.

When I landed in the Emerald Isle, I emailed my family and my office to tell them they would either have to e-mail me or contact the hotel if there was anything urgent. Then, off I went to wander around sodden golf courses in the “soft” Irish rain feeling like a child playing truant from school.

It was wonderful. There were no irritating bleeps as text messages announced some stupid promotion in a Dubai store and after a while I stopped listening for the distinctive ringtone or vibration when it was supposedly on “silent”.

Conversations were uninterrupted by calls, although I became more and more aware of how distracted other people are by their phones and Blackberries.

All around me, at airports, in shops, on buses, in parks, young and old alike peer into tiny screens, frowning, smiling, thumbs moving constantly. As I walked through Dublin’s famous St Stephen’s Green thinking how beautiful it looked I began to feel a sense of superiority over the masses of slaves to electronic devices.

Only twice was it a small problem, once when ordering a taxi and they couldn’t seem to grasp the notion that I didn’t have a mobile so the driver would have to resort to old-fashioned methods like picking me up at the required time from a designated spot.

Then I discovered that I didn’t know how to operate a public telephone that required a phone card. Three passers-by looked at me as if I had just arrived from Mars and none of them could help but I worked it out in the end.

I found being without a mobile made me more punctual as there was no way of alerting people if I was running late and once I got used to it I realised that there’s very little in my life that can’t wait an hour or two to be dealt with when I get back to my laptop. It certainly convinced me that I don’t want an iPhone or a Blackberry.

I would hate to be that accessible.

Carla Bruni has told a French magazine that being the wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy sometimes makes “normal’ behaviour impossible so she likes to go shopping in disguise by putting on glasses and changing her voice.

Quite how she thinks that makes her invisible is hard to fathom. She is often photographed in large sunglasses and still looks like Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, one of the most famous supermodels ever. And as very few people actually know what she sounds like, talking in a weird high-pitched voice is more likely to draw attention to her than if she just talked normally.

It strikes me that the very last thing Ms Bruni wants is to flit around unnoticed.

The television repair man rang to give me his estimated time of arrival, turned up on time to the second the following morning, sorted out my satellite dish efficiently and didn’t even complain about having to climb up onto the roof.

A UK taxi driver got out of the car and helped me with my suitcases. Another one in the UAE offered to drive in front of me to my destination when I stopped him to ask directions. The guy who washes my car in a Dubai car park ran off to change a Dh 100 note for me when I didn’t have any smaller notes. What is happening? Could it be that the recession is having an effect on the service industry? Even the miserable financial cloud hanging over us all has a silver lining.