Miranda Hart's beauty manifesto - Telegraph I reckon, to my great dismay, that she did indeed mean the latter. And in saying that I don't take myself seriously in this regard, her assessment of me is absolutely bang-on. If taking oneself seriously as a woman means committing to a life of grooming, pumicing, pruning and polishing one's exterior for the benefit of onlookers, then I may as well heave my unwieldy rucksack to the top of a bleak Scottish hill and make my home there under a stone, where I'll fashion shoes out of mud and clothes out of leaves. From an early age I seem to have found myself cheerfully opting out of the whole business. It was through necessity, initially. I spent my childhood clad in 1970s hand-me-downs, primarily from male cousins, which mainly consisted of a selection of beige, brown and orange dungarees. That, combined with a perfectly round pudding-bowl haircut, made me look, on a good day, like a cross between Ann Widdecombe, one of The Flower Pot Men and a monk. I was constantly mistaken for a little boy but I didn't care one jot. I was happy eating chocolate biscuits and pretending to be a Red Indian. I didn't give any thought to how I looked. Which was absolutely perfect, and exactly as things should have been. At boarding-school, I remained in the tomboy category - a safe, neutral Switzerland as far as the looks issue was concerned. This gave me the freedom to focus on what mattered most, eg how to blow up a ginger-beer bottle with a litre of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda (please don't try this at home). Yes, my friends and I were happily exempt from each of the three major gangs: The Beautiful Ones, The Beautiful Ones" Friends, and The Ugly Ones. We simply saw ourselves as The Normals, making no great impact on the beauty scale either way. The Beautiful Ones spent most of their time primping and mirror-peering to maintain their position. The Beautiful Ones" Friends carried hairbrushes for The Beautiful Ones, basked in their reflected glory, and toiled like Victorian miners to gain the mastery of clothes and make-up with which their more comely friends seemed to have been born. And then there were the girls The Beautiful Ones cruelly dubbed 'The Ugly Ones. They slunk miserably from corner to corner, their hair greased flat against their flaking scalps, too beaten down even to club together into some sort of snarky gang. How absolutely vile all-girls schools can be. Now - if you don't mind - I'm going to get briefly thoughtful and attempt to make a point (brief X Factor-style pause for effect): IT IS FAR, FAR BETTER NEVER TO HAVE BEEN BEAUTIFUL. As a beautiful young woman in a world full of people with eyes, it's unlikely that you're going to have to draw heavily upon your other personal resources - intelligence, wit, compassion and general wily low cunning - in order to just 'get by. If you're gorgeous, you're going to get by absolutely fine. Everyone will always want you in the room and you'll be lavished with attention, which you'll do very little to earn. Whereas if you look like a sack of offal that's been drop-kicked down a lift-shaft into a pond, you're going to spend many of your formative years alone. This may seem miserable - but you'll have space, space you can constructively use to discover and hone your skills, learn a language, develop an interest in cosmology, practise the oboe, do whatever you fancy, really, so long as it doesn't involve being looked at or snogging anyone. And you'll very likely emerge from your chrysalis aged 25 as a highly accomplished young thing ready to take on the world. Meanwhile, The Beautiful Ones will have been so busy having boyfriends and brushing their hair they'll just be... who they always were. However much I might have yearned to be one of The Beautiful Ones, particularly at those ghastly school discos, where any desperate attempt to impress the opposite sex led to at best deep humiliation, I now feel extremely blessed that I wasn't. I see them at school reunions from time to time - many of them are still beautiful, and clearly put a great deal of effort into maintaining that beauty. Good for them. Some of them are 'just mothers" - the most admirable of jobs if chosen, but you can tell a lot are wondering what they have really achieved for themselves. They're nowhere near as jolly as 'The Ugly Ones," who are all very cheerfully running international banks and breeding vast stables of racehorses and doing marvellous things in developing countries, all while juggling a family brood. No - 'The Ugly Ones" won, a thousand times over, I reckon. They had the roughest ride, and emerged the strongest. But what about us neutral ones? The 'normals," stuck somewhere in the middle? The tomboys, the sporties? We didn't pay much attention to our place in the looks-department hierarchy. Then, by our mid-twenties, when still not having had a serious long-term relationship, there was an interesting and confusing time when we got a bit self-conscious and started to consider what 'The Men" might think of us. This meant we went from looking like ourselves to trying slightly too hard to look like someone we thought men might find attractive. But styling ourselves to please others didn't work: it was like trying to hammer a square peg into a ra-ra-skirt-shaped hole. So we were forced to make a decision about our attitude towards the beauty game. Mine was something along the lines of, 'This is who I am, and this is the level at which I'm going to present myself, I feel fine, and if you don't like it you're more than welcome to look away, thank you very much. I decided, quite simply, not to care very much at all. As long as my rear-end and stomach were hidden from the public gaze, then I considered any outfit a roaring success. People are either going to like the look of me, or they're not. And apart from remaining vaguely clean and healthy, there's not much I can do to control that. Is an eyelash tint, a facial and the right handbag really going to make all that much difference? With this decision, I think I've spared myself a lot of misery. You may look at me and see a slightly frayed, wool-clad woman with an inexplicably hefty rucksack, but I look in the mirror and simply give thanks for all I've opted out of. When I am Queen of the World (well, it could happen), matters of beauty, styling and self-presentation will be conducted according to (drum roll, please) ... Here are the key elements of my manifesto: Clothing In order to remove the need for all forms of decision-making, money-spending and sweating-in-shop-changing-rooms, citizens of Miranda-Land will be issued with the following: 1 x Governmental Weekday Outfit 1 x Governmental Weekend Outfit 1 x Standard Party Kaftan (unisex) Clogs These will be offered in a variety of colours, and will be the primary way in which citizens of Miranda-Land can express their individuality through their clothing. However, anyone caught bragging about the cost of their clogs, comparing another's clogs unfavourably with their own, or writing 5,000-word magazine articles about 'The Next Big Clog" will have theirs confiscated, and forced for a short time to wear enormous flippers. Beauty treatments, as such, will only be offered in Miranda-approved beauty parlours. At the door of each beauty parlour will be a large sign that reads come in although there's no need. you look lovely anyway! The following treatments will be offered: Pedicure A small group of friendly old ladies will stare at the customer's bare feet and coo affectionately, uttering phrases like, 'I bet they get you from A to B very nicely," and, 'Feet really do look better with shoes on them, don't they? That's the whole point of feet. Anti-Ageing Skincare Customers wishing to 'turn back the clock" and 'banish wrinkles for ever" will be offered a choice of three procedures: the 'Roast Dinner," the 'Donut Platter" and the 'Hot Buttered Toast." These treatments are exactly as described: the customer will sit down and eat a delicious meal and/or treat, while Miranda explains to them the basic skincare principle of 'Fat Don't Crack. Colonic Irrigation Any customer requesting the colonic irrigation treatment will be led into a discreet back room, and laid down gently on a bed. YOU'RE A FOOL!" before hitting them lightly over the head with a loofah and ushering them into the 'Skincare" suite, where they'll be offered a plate of apple crumble to calm them down. Brazilian If anyone asks for a Brazilian, they will be presented with a young man or woman (whichever their preferred taste) to dance the salsa for them. So, that's the plan. What do you reckon? The Mirror ...and the length of time for which you're forced to stare at your reflection. Because it's weird, isn't it, when you're made to look at your face for too long? It becomes craggy, or puddingy, and then you get worried and it starts to look worse. At a certain point it stops looking like your face and morphs into something altogether more peculiar. In my case, the face of a chubby choirboy. The Robe The embarrassing walk from hairwash-area to haircut-seat, with a turban on your head and your weird gown around you, so you feel like an old Moroccan man selling dates at a market. The Big Reveal Being shown the result of your cut and blow-dry. Realising they have gone for what can only be described as the 'Princess Anne" - a style at once bouffant, risky and ageing. Then saying, 'Thank you so much, I love it, you're amazing," as you blink back tears. The Walk of Shame Leaving the salon assuming everyone thinks you look ridiculous. And cue rain. The Sauna I DO NOT WANT to lie with half-naked strangers in a sealed wooden cave, avoiding eye contact as our sweat pools mix gently in the centre of the floor. Manicures Which are basically just holding hands with a stranger for 45 minutes while listening to Enya. The Complimentary 'Lifestyle Consultation A trim woman in a uniform will lead you into a little interrogation suite, where she'll quiz you on your diet, exercise and skincare habits. You'll lie through your teeth and claim that you jog five times a week, enjoy yoga, avoid sugar and that your only vice is the occasional splurge at the Eve Lom counter. The trim woman will look at you sceptically as you stand and your Emergency Maltesers fall out of your pocket on to the floor. The Suspect 'Therapies Anything involving hot jets of water being blasted at you as you stand against a wall in order to improve muscle tone. Under slightly different circumstances, this process would be called 'War Crimes. Is It Just Me? (Hodder & Stoughton, £20), by Miranda Hart, is published on 11 October and available to pre-order from Telegraph Books (0844 871 1515; books.telegraph.co.uk) at £18 plus £1.35 p&p