CUTTING EDGE: Someone hold my place at base camp

IT'S getting so you haven't lived unless you've climbed Mt Everest, or posed for a nude calendar. At the very least you're undistinguished.
This week 13-year-old Jordan Romero rang his mother from the top of the world, following in the boots of every one-legged guitar player, asthmatic octogenarian, Chinese bank manager, Venezuelan Playboy bunny, paraplegic banker, Nigerian scammer and Icelandic lingerie designer who can afford the fare to base camp. That's the reason why I haven't bothered, of course. It's so common.
The pathway to the clouds is famously littered with the corpses of those who don't make it; that must be part of its charm; and I expect it's also strewn by now with discarded breath freshener and flimsy silk underwear. Sherpas will have a postcard kiosk on the peak, if not a cable car to get there, and I expect they take your photograph next to a tin cutout of Sir Ed to prove you made it.
Once there was magic in the ascent, but now everybody's got an excuse to tootle up there and prove their handicap - age, disability, gender - is no handicap at all. I wouldn't mind, but they haven't put flush toilets in yet.
Maybe Romero will now pose for a nude prodigy calendar, along with the teenage yachtie who just made it round the world to Australia. Why not? Everyone else does.
In the latest variation on this theme, Massey University's third-year veterinary students have posed for this year's calendar, using either animals or swotty books and veterinary gadgets to hide their normally private body parts. They hope to raise money for a holiday, and for an organisation that fights animal abuse and neglect. It goes without saying that they could do neither of these things with their clothes on. Nobody would take them at all seriously.
One photograph, published this week, shows four of the female students hiding behind bewildered miniature horses. Now if they'd used mice I might have been impressed. In my case I'd need a Clydesdale for modesty purposes, but out of respect for the finer feelings of the horse I wouldn't dream of it.
There are easier ways to draw attention to yourself than dragging yourself up Everest or taking your clothes off, and marrying well is one of them. Hillary Clinton's husband may be a hard dog to keep on the porch, but he did become president of the US, so now she can auction off a day with him to raise money to cover her own  campaigning.
Not to be outdone, the Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson, ensuring that his life, despite being a member of the Royal Family, would never be completely dull, and that however boring he might be himself, he'd seem interesting by association. Although he's not famous in quite the specific way as Bill Clinton is, his former wife has achieved plenty of scandal on her own account, and without that in the background he'd be just another balding middle-
aged man in a suit.
Just think of the compliment she paid him when she offered contact with him for half a million pounds. She's such an expert saleswoman that she even made it look as if it could possibly be worth it.
The world would be a poorer place without Fergie in it. Her adventures rival everything Beatrix Potter ever wrote. We've had Fergie having her toes sucked, Fergie writing children's books, Fergie putting on weight, Fergie heinously in debt, Fergie making TV documentaries, Fergie out of debt, Fergie in perfectly horrible clothes, and Saint Fergie of Weightwatchers, my personal favourite incarnation. Now we have Fergie in debt again, hence offering access
to the duke for money, and being sprung on film by a News of the World journalist, taken in by his posh voice.
You can moralise all you will about the money angle, but the truly best bit of that incriminating film was the half full bottle of red wine in front of her, her half full glass, and the ciggie she puffed on. I'd say Fergie was up to a size 14 again, and using the tubby girl's friend to stop ballooning further. There's mileage in that for the tobacco lobby, and that's where I fervently hope she'll pop up next.