Katy Guest: What your favourite book says about you

Urban Notebook

Admitting publicly to the things that move you is daunting, so it can't have been easy for Film Club to persuade celebrities to disclose movies that changed their lives. The list they have come up with is revealing. The former
Shameless actress Maxine Peake was inspired by
Kes, while the footballer Theo Walcott loved
The Pursuit Of Happyness.

The new literary salon at London's Shoreditch House (it's like a book club but with cocktails, heckling and a swimming pool) invites book lovers to put themselves on the line by nominating "The Story of My Life". So far, literary fandom is divided along gender lines. Boys have chosen The Wind In The Willows and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy ; girls have picked Tess Of The D'Urbervilles and Valley Of The Dolls. Reader, it was I who chose Tess. And defending a secret and formative passion for Hardy to a room full of literati is probably too revealing for anyone's good. At least film buffs and book lovers don't base their choices on focus group politics. Gordon Brown's favourite film, Chariots Of Fire (Scot faces choice between duty and glory) may have been a considered one, but it shows more honesty than David Cameron's Desert Island Discs. For picking Benny Hill's Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West) as one of his inoffensive ditties, he should be exiled and made to listen to it for life.

Don't stop at bras

I was surprised to be invited on Facebook to join Busts for Justice, a group for women with larger breasts. But no, the targeted marketing (which offers dating agencies to "single" Facebook users and divorce lawyers to those who switch their relationship status to "married") has not gone wrong. B4J is protesting against Marks & Spencer charging more for bigger bras – a campaign any modern feminist must support. But where will it protest against John Lewis's larger pants – a horrific polyester invention that heats the rear to "melt" fat cells into liquid. Women, respect your bodies. Bottoms for Justice is here.

Short shrift for George

Someone who does need larger pants is George Osborne, who was pictured cycling to work in a pair of budgie-smugglers that scared pigeons and did nothing to conceal his Tory policies. While I support the Home Secretary's right to carry accidental cleavage in public, I object to anyone turning up to work in teeny, tiny shorts. It's hard enough already to take wee George seriously.