A couple of years ago, prime-time soap opera and B-movie diva proved she hadn’t lost her relevance when the then 77-year-old actress, novelist and Dynasty vixen declared, in an interview with the UK’s Hello magazine (and which I read about on PopEater.com): ‘I have to say, there aren’t that many good looking actresses around today. I mean, there’s Angelina Jolie and there’s . . . Angelina Jolie.’ And she continued: ‘Jennifer Aniston is cute, but I wouldn’t call her beautiful.’

Thank you Miss Collins for saying something we were all thinking. And for those of you who insist you weren’t thinking this, it’s okay. I really don’t think about superficial, trivial things, either. That’s why Joan Collins, Angelina Jolie and, distantly, Jennifer Aniston are so important to me.

There is something to be said for wanting media figures to be beautiful. The great thing about movies in the golden age of cinema is that people were beautiful in a way that most of us could never achieve. And that was a good thing.

It all got awful and horrible in the 1970s onward when people needed to start looking real. And so we had a cinematic revolution that took us from the silver screen to cinéma vérité. In my opinion, that was when tawdriness and ugliness started taking over our media. It was earthy. It was real. It was disgusting.

Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of Vogue before Anna Wintour was even born once famously stated, ‘There is enough ugliness in the world, why add to it?’

Vreeland had a point. And Wintour understands that point, modernising it by making the fashion images not exactly politically correct. I mean, the woman brought back fur, for goodness sake. And, even though I have my fair share of little furry friends living with me and try my best to be vegetarian, occasionally I want a steak.

So I’m sorry. I don’t want reality. I want my media figures to be gorgeous and unattainable. That’s why Angelina Jolie will forever hold a place in my heart and mind. She is beautiful, even if she is a husband stealer. Jennifer Aniston can just go back to living next door and taking out the garbage.

I don’t want plus-sized models and men with beer guts populating my life. I want to see people looking way better than I will ever look. Who out there is presumptuous enough to believe that, when we see an image in the media, we actually think we can look like that? That’s just silly.

But then again, neither do I want to look at anorexic models who look like they just dragged themselves out of a concentration camp, either. I want women who look like Angelina Jolie or Joan Collins in her heyday. I want men who look, if not like Arnold Schwarzenegger, at least like Cary Grant or Clark Gable.

Don’t talk to me about Giselle Bundchen or America’s Next Top Model. Forget about Adrien Brody or the latest Zegna male models. They’ll be okay in about 10 kilos.