Starstruck - not!

The woman at Dubai One is stalking me. No, really, she is. I must have one of those faces that just says 'please humilitate me in front of your television viewers'. I was rushing to get to the Youth Festival (I was judging the Fashion section - yeah I know, unbelieveable) and this woman from Dubai One rushes up, sticks a camera in my face and asks 'Do you mind answering a few questions?' and before I have chance to say 'Well, actually I'm in a bit of a hurry...', the camera's rolling and I  transmogrify from the normally articulate, reasonably intelligent person that I am, into a bumbling idiot, giggling like a schoolgirl. And they actually air it!

So, the week before the Royal Wedding, my daughter and I are doing some emergency 'she doesn't have the right clothes to go to Paris' shopping and the woman from Dubai One pops up, as if by magic, and sticks her now very familiar camera in my face and asks me if I will be watching the Royal Wedding, and do I think Kate will make a good Princess? Once again, I stumble through a few phrases, acting as if I have just pitched up from Mars and have never spoken English before. And once again, I am humiliated before the UAE population when the show airs.

I should have learned my lesson in England. I had been decorating and was fed up, so packed my younger daughter into the car and we went to a shopping centre. My younger daughter was about 2 years old at the time and I had just given her a packet of chocolate buttons, which she had decided could best be absorbed through her skin, and had smeared most of it onto her face. Because I was decorating I had paint in my hair and let's just describe my outfit as 'not exactly designered up' and leave it at that. I could see that there was some sort of demonstration going on, with an audience standing around and cameras were rolling. Up pops this immacuately dressed woman, asking me if I wouldn't mind giving my opinion of a new product they were launching. I thought fine, I have 5 minutes, thinking that she meant as part of the audience that had gathered. But oh no. She meant in front of the audience, live on air for the shoping channel! By the time I realised, it was too late to back out. The woman was handing me a disclaimer to sign and I was standing, paint-in-hair and all, toddler covered in chocolate, in front of a TV audience. Great.

So, from now on, I am soooo pro the abaya and full headgear. Perhaps the Dubai One woman won't be able to pick me out of the crowd so easily and what little dignity I have left, will remain in tact.