My food-snob children will turn me into a cereal offender So I cheat. Our three are not snobs for designer brands - Primark will do - but they do care about food labels. The teenager who doesn't know whether it's Monday or Friday somehow always spots that the carton of juice is past its sell-by date - and refuses to let the liquid past his lips. So before I get home with the shopping, I peel off the best-before stickers on items I've bought at a fraction of the full price. In this way, yellowing broccoli and wrinkly string beans have taken over our fridge. What the children don't know won't kill them (bacilli permitting). When the eight-year-old issues an "Ugh, gross!!!" at the sight of a brown, squidgy banana, I tell her not to be so superficial, and discuss the merits of the MP Laura Sandys's "ugly food" campaign. Food swaps are not the only guilt trips mothers endure. The breast-feeding sorority had me convinced my daughter would be a spindly dolt if I bottle-fed. Breast is best! They repeated their mantra, as they bullied me into suckling my baby after an emergency caesarian. I was exhausted and emotional but I felt I couldn't turn to the bottle. So I have little sympathy for those breast-feeders up in arms because Facebook - which allows violent and sexually explicit images - has cracked down on nipples, even with suckling babes attached. I hate violence, and tawdry photos. But I'm not keen on the sanctimonious Madonnas who take up two seats on the bus and embarrass fellow diners with their great show of maternal nurturing. The real puzzle is: given the tired, flabby look women have after childbirth, why do they want their photographs posted on the internet at all? And why does Facebook worry that they could be a turn-on? It was only after I had agreed to do "The Big Questions" on BBC1 last Sunday that Maggie Mutch, its lovely production manager, confessed. Owing to budget cuts, Mentorn TV had decided to drop its make-up lady. "I just wanted to make sure you'd slap on some lipstick," Maggie told me. On the morning, I showed up with potions, lotions and brushes, and tried to fix myself up for the camera. I obviously failed, as several friends rang me: "Were you ill on that show?" My fellow panellists, all male, were also worried about their appearance au naturel. One (not Prof Richard Dawkins, I hasten to add) was relieved that he'd just lost a stone on the Dukan diet: it almost made up for no make-up. Tonight, I'm on "Question Time" - produced by Mentorn TV. I hope there's a make-up lady this time, or I'll worry more about concealing the bags under my eyes than revealing the gaps in my knowledge of the Greek economy.