Another week, another celebrity reveals that he or she has an ADHD diagnosis, proudly making their condition public as if they were a chef who had just won a Michelin star or a nobody who had just been knighted.
This week it is the turn of Jools Oliver, the 51-year-old wife of TV millionaire Jamie, the celebrity-adjacent mother of five who has just announced that she has autism, ADHD, social anxiety, health anxiety, might possibly be going through the menopause and suffers from a condition she describes as having ‘too much empathy’.
What?
Jools, put down your adult colouring book, stick on another calm patch and please explain this hellish sounding empath affliction. ‘Well, I just feel things so deeply,’ she said. ‘I get so dramatic over things, and I can be really up and down. And the empathy sometimes is painful.’
You might not be surprised to hear I don’t suffer from a surplus of empathy. When I try to locate my inner core of compassion, all that ensues is a loud parping sound, which can be embarrassing.
Instead of a well of compassion, all I can find deep within is the part of me that gets irritated at the sound of other people breathing. Readers, I try to be good but people like Jools – with their fashionable ailments and hocus-pocus maladies – make me want to be bad.
That is not to say Mrs Oliver has not suffered, or is not deserving of your sympathy, but forgive me for saving mine for those who, through no fault of their own, must battle with life-changing health diagnoses and uncertain futures.
And if Jools sincerely has too much empathy, I know she will empathise with my lack of empathy, however painful it might be for her.
Jools also believes that she is under the cosh of a neurodivergence that has ‘ruined’ her life for 45 years. ‘It is draining, it is tiring, it is really hard work,’ she said, and for once she wasn’t talking about the process of removing excess liquid from the pasta pot to make the kids’ tea.
This week it is the turn of Jools Oliver, the 51-year-old wife of TV millionaire Jamie, the celebrity-adjacent mother of five who has just announced that she has autism
She was talking on a podcast called the One-Stop Disorder Shop or something like that, I couldn’t really focus, I’ve got my own issues when it comes to concentrating on the claims made by the pampered walking wounded of the modern world.
For as I listened to her woes, I thought this woman is just another of those quasi-nonentities who insist they have an adult diagnosis because it could explain and excuse any perceived character flaws, bad choices, even worse behaviours, addictions or indulgences of their younger years.
Former Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon, for example, was recently diagnosed with ADHD, which he believes explains why he took cocaine as a young man. He made a mistake, he paid for it, then went on to make a great success of his life – why does he need this odd razzamatazz of validation now?
Sam Fender used the same reason to explain his former heavy drinking, but his recovery is so admirable it seems almost needy. Lily Allen, Paris Hilton, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Justin Timberlake, Johnny Vegas, Ant McPartlin, Barry Keoghan, Britney Spears – all of them have klaxoned their late-life ADHD diagnoses to the world.
And all of them also have some kind of behavioural issues – addictions, public troubles – which they believe are connected.
Perhaps they are – or perhaps it is just an excuse for their bad behaviour; a lazy jettisoning of responsibility and agency over one’s life and choices.
And where celebrities go, the public will follow.
Sam Fender used the same reason to explain his former heavy drinking, but his recovery is so admirable it seems almost needy
NHS England estimates that nearly 2.5 million people have ADHD, including those who are undiagnosed. This figure marks the first publicly available estimate of how common the condition is among the population. Especially those who pay for private diagnoses, which seem to be handed out like sweets at Halloween these days.
As of April 2026, 100,207 people in the UK claim disability benefits, with ADHD listed as their main condition – and over half of them are young people aged between 16 and 24.
What a sad state of affairs. Instead of trying to medicalise human frailty, can’t we just accept that no one is perfect and we all have our weaknesses and frailties?
That is not to say that someone like Jools Oliver does not have her demons, even if – on the surface – her life looks pretty idyllic, pretty damn good, pretty much a cherry on top of the organic sponge cake kind of vibe, as she might say herself.
She has a rich and successful husband – Jamie is worth around £200million – and even if money can’t buy you happiness, it sure can buy you the means to remove a lot of life’s unhappiness, along with its problems and worries.
Don’t even argue. We all know this is true.
In addition, Jools has five children who seem to have so far evaded the Beckham-alike nepo trap of trying to be celebrities themselves, along with all the heartache and ridicule that involves.
At home, she has a retinue of domestic staff in her 16th-century Elizabethan country house set on an idyllic 70-acre estate in Essex, complete with – grits teeth – swimming pool, secret garden, walled garden, stables and even a moat. Bish, bash, bosh.
It is amazing how far you can go on 20-minute meals and perfect prawn skewers.
And she hasn’t just been popping out babies for two decades. Jools has a flourishing business life of her own, including a children’s clothing line sold in John Lewis. She has also published a bestselling series of parenting and family books to show all you idiot mums out there how to do it properly.
Her bestseller is called Minus Nine To One – The Diary Of An Honest Mum.
This is what really gets me. It is filled with advice about staying calm and grounded throughout pregnancy and beyond and shamelessly launched on the back of her husband’s fame.
Yet now we learn, after all these years, that this neurodivergent, medically averse, autistic, ADHD sufferer and mumzilla wasn’t being entirely honest about any of it after all. And I don’t have any empathy for that.
Jen's a ghost of herself
Jennifer Lawrence is beautiful, talented, smart and funny – but is she playing some kind of ghastly Halloween trick on us all?
She has suddenly appeared in a magazine wearing what appears to be a brand-new face. She still looks lovely, just more like a distant relative or a ghost of her former self.
She has also admitted to having a boob job because she wants to look like a hot mum on the school run and has just launched a hair-care range after promising for years she would do no such thing.
The range is called Mes (pronounced mess) and has made cynics wonder if she is turning into a Kardashian. Your ges (pronounced guess) is as good as mine.
Jennifer Lawrence has suddenly appeared wearing what appears to be a brand-new face
Prepping? It’s a jolly good chance to mock and shop
To prep or not to prep, that is the question. Wes Streeting’s warning about stocking up with emergency supplies for a three-day siegeathon has met with the traditional national response – everyone having a good laugh while secretly ordering wind-up radios on Amazon and stocking up on baked beans.
Mocking while shopping, that is the British way.
Yet I feel a wave of unease. Is that ridiculous? You only have to look at recent events to see how vulnerable we all are, how our lives are shaped and controlled by elements we have absolutely no control over.
Storms, cyber attacks, Andy Burnham, outages, wars, oil pipelines, blockades, riots, looters, Putin, Trump, hot and cold running maniacs everywhere.
On Wednesday, hundreds of GP surgeries’ websites across England and Wales went offline after their software provider, Silicon Practice, unexpectedly entered administration.
That is not nothing, especially if you were picking up a prescription for life-saving medicine. In September, there were two air traffic control system failures, causing over 2,000 flight cancellations which affected nearly 250,000 passengers.
Last year, Marks & Spencer was brought to its knees by a ransomware attack that disrupted the retailer’s operations for months and cost it millions. And so on. We are helpless and exposed on so many fronts – but will beans, matches, water and a camping stove save us?
Better safe than sorry.
I don’t pity Meghan, I admire her
No, I simply cannot join in the greasy chorus of voices now professing their sympathy and support for the Duchess of Sussex.
Yes, it is rotten luck to shuffle your Unhappy Family cards to find you have a bad dad in the pack – one who even may be guilty of underage sex crimes.
Yes, it is grim to have a hillbilly half-brother and a ranting half-sister who both seem unhinged and jealous every time they talk about you. Yet my primary instinct is not to feel sorry for Meghan, but to admire her instead. Look at this woman. She had the guts, the intelligence and the energy to get herself the hell out of the Markle family circle – a doomed rat’s nest of no hopers – to move far away and make something of her life.
However, I still can’t take her seriously. Especially as she has just released a Christmas leather notebook for £138, engraved with the words
A Penny For Your Thoughts.
As ever, she can have mine for free.
Last Saturday evening I got caught in a London rainstorm. Just like Mae West, I needed to get out of my wet clothes and into a dry martini and where better than Soho’s lovely Bar Termini.
From this cosy vantage, I saw a woman walking nonchalantly through the downpour with a plastic shower cap on her head and I thought – genius. Just slip one into your handbag for rainy day emergencies. I remember when Scottish grannies never stepped outside without a plastic headscarf called a RainMate secreted about their person but – stop me when this gets boring – that could never be as effective as an elasticated cap fitted snug to the forehead.
Pro tip: you might look ridiculous on the street, but your hair will be dry and ravishing at your destination. You’re welcome. Cheers!
The new Bond must be Lowden, Jack Lowden
Please. I’ll say it again. It must be Jack Lowden. No one else
Please no, not anotherlate contender for the role of James Bond. It is getting silly now.
Latest name in the frame is Rivals charming playboy Alex Hassell. He has the requisite tinge of evil, but at 46 he is simply too old.
Drippy Joe Alwyn, who once dated Taylor Swift, has also been mentioned and it simply cannot be him.
With his whipped bouffant, baby stubble and tortured poet aura, Joe looks like a man who’d struggle with a laser printer, let alone a laser watch.
Please. I’ll say it again. It must be Jack Lowden. No one else.