I don’t know what my politics are these days, which is a shameful statement for someone with a degree in the subject to make. But, like many of my generation, I find that there is no one party that fits my expectations as a voter. I am to the left of some of my circle, and to the right of others, but I wouldn’t identify as a centrist.

While my politics no longer belong to any one party or movement, I would have said that some of my political ideals – such as the desirability of a representative democracy – were unshakeable.

Having spent the past week in Bahrain to cover the 2012 Formula One Grand Prix, I can no longer say that is the case.

Ah celebrity. Will we ever tire of it? And where does celebrity begin and appeared-once-in-a-reality-TV-show end? We just don’t know. There’s just no accounting for celebrity. Some people are impressed by musicians, or actors or models. Others screw up their faces and wonder aloud who you are talking about exactly, because they simply don’t pay attention to the celebrity world – that’s how superior they are.

But everybody has a weakness, be it for someone famed for more highbrow activities than Katie Price’s (who drives through Brighton on a regular basis in the Pepto-Bismobile) or the Come Dine with Me alumni. We’ve all had a star-struck moment in with the glitter and twisted world of celebrity. Here are some of the famous people we at Squeamish Bikini have encountered… 

Actor Claire has had many a job whilst ‘resting’ and can now add Squeamish writer to that list. Claire shares the highlights of her CV with us… 

Pushing through the weekend throng of a busy Saturday tube concourse recently, I was accosted by a jovial fundraiser, determinedly weathering the storm of human traffic dressed in an all-enveloping sunflower suit. A cheery face peeped out from the centre of the flower as she shuffled about shaking a bucket, eliciting the odd shrapnel from passing pockets. I felt the pang of camaraderie.   This may have been a valiant, extrovert volunteer but I doubt it, I suspected an actor was enshrined in that voluminous costume. 

For each year of secondary school there is a song to define it. The song everybody was singing on their way to class or on the bus home, the cassette or CD that got worn out or scratched you played it so often, the track that got the boys and girls to the centre of the dance floor (gym) at the school disco. I date myself here but I can tell you in year 7 everybody was singing TLC’s Waterfalls (with optional rap edit). No, we did not know what it was about. I for one did not have a clue because we didn’t have cable at home and no MTV meant no TLC video hints or cue.

I did have the cassette tape though. My abiding love of combat trousers can be traced to that cover art (though early Eternal, All Saints and Tank Girl played a part in that) featuring the 3 TLC members standing in in a small pool of water, their hi-tops peeking out on the surface. 

The classicist Mary Beard has a new series on BBC 2, All Roads Lead to Rome, which I highly recommend you watch here. The series is entertaining and informative, Beard’s huge enthusiasm for her subject is infectious. The woman is just having so much fun and wants to share it. I suspect that if Beard’s passion was for mathematics she could make the field seem fascinating. Which I’m sure it is; it’s just not my forte.

It isn’t just Professor Beard’s facts and stories about Roman life, delivered leaning towards the camera because this is important, that makes this new history programme so refreshing. It is the respect Beard has for her audience’s ability to understand without the employment of actors leaping about in togas and speaking in some wild appropriation of a Latin accent. 

On Sunday in the Observer continued its fondness for the well-informed confessional piece, complementing its sister publication The Guardian’s What I’m Really Thinking… series. In the feature, The Woman who edited Nuts magazine former Nuts editor Terri White describes her time working in men’s magazines, alongside some anecdotes from other women who worked in what we affectionately refer to as Lad Mags.

White recalls an evening chopping the heads off images of topless women for a ground-breaking online Nuts brand extension Assess My Breasts. Women were invited to submit topless images of themselves for the perusal and judgement of Nuts magazine readers.  “Faces were a no-no – part of the "appeal" was anonymity so the girls would feel comfortable with being publicly graded. And so, there I was at 9pm, attempting a mass head-chopping on pictures we kept on file and had sought permission to upload.”

TV is moving on from the overweight to the overloaded. It’s no longer all about embarrassing bodies but embarrassing rooms. Over-spilling waistbands are giving way to over-spilling cupboards. Oxfam are accusing the women of the UK of allowing at least 9 bras to languish, unworn in their underwear drawers. Hoarding. It’s now officially A Thing.

Even the most minimalist person has a guilty (or not so guilty) hoard of stuff, the need of which others might question. Those who move around a lot have a cardboard box that’s never unpacked yet the contents is indispensable. Some people now sleep on mattresses supported by piles of magazines stuffed beneath it, the bed frame redundant. Some of the Squeamish Bikini team have confessed to their own hoards…

Squeamish Sue is approaching the end of her Access course, after all the form filling, homework and exams Sue reflects on her new attitude to her education and intelligence.

I didn’t want to do a vocational degree. In fact I had no idea I could do a degree of ANY kind at one time because I simply imagined one had to have a whole string of prior qualifications before setting foot in a learning environment again. I don’t have a single certificate to my name unless you count a diploma from Durban Business College in 1969. All I possess is a keen interest in people; I never realised that this energy could be channelled into a practical learning environment.

I have a new job. This is a cause of much excitement, because it’s something I want to do, in an organisation I admire – and while I might be paid more elsewhere, the benefits are great. But one of these benefits has given me a slight quandry: should I take private health cover?

If I want it I can have Bupa cover for me and my partner, for free (you pay tax on the cover, so it’s not completely without cost).

My feelings about the NHS, and introducing market forces into healthcare, have been documented here before. So would that make me a hypocrite to take it?

It’s been a week of challenges as usual for the Chancellor. Normally when the public is displeased with financial news George Osborne tends to point the finger at the previous government. This time he can only put his head in his hands and say, ‘I blame myself’ through stringy spittle. What did he do?!

Osborne told the Telegraph: “I was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it's within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don't think that's right”.