Editor-At-Large: Give me a decent butler over Botox

More news about butlers. Upstairs, Downstairs, the popular television series that starred Gordon Jackson as the punctilious Mr Hudson, is returning to our screens. A remake is planned, with Kathy Burke as an overworked housemaid, and this time around we'll be hearing more about life down in the kitchen than up in the drawing-room.

Below Stairs, according to Granada, will be sexier than the original. But surely they've missed a trick by setting it in Edwardian London. The Burrell affair has ignited public interest in the extraordinary lives of those who are paid to serve the very rich, and Sir Michael Peat's official inquiry into the sale of royal gifts by members of the Royal Household can only add fuel to the fire. Then there is the forthcoming trial of Princess Margaret's former butler Harold Brown, who is charged with selling royal property. For top drama material these days, why bother with the past and drafting in overworked Andrew Davies to give Anna Karenina a new look? There are reams of extraordinary material in the public domain, just waiting to be turned into Upstairs, Downstairs 21st-century style. And Paul Burrell, with all those TV interviews under his belt, will no doubt soon be applying to Equity to launch his new career as an actor.

The events unfolding in a Monaco courtroom last week reveal what life is like for servants of the very rich these days. The billionaire Edmond Safra died when a fire started in his Monte Carlo apartment by one of his nurses, Ted Maher, raged out of control. Mr Maher earned £400 a day, considerably more than anyone below stairs at Highgrove or Kensington Palace. The Safras also reputedly employed more than 60 gardeners to manicure the beautiful grounds of their house just down the road from Monte Carlo, La Leopolda. Mrs Safra has added the services of the Prince of Wales's former PR man, Mark Bolland, to her considerable staff for the duration of the trial.

The extremely wealthy and grand employ plenty of people, and good luck to them. I for one am not churlish about the way people such as Mrs Safra run their lives. If she needs a personal PR man, then who am I to question why? I trust we will be receiving a daily bulletin on her in-court wardrobe as well as full accessory details. While Prince Charles seems to need to employ a whole domestic army of valets, sock-folders and the like, not to mention gun-loaders and pheasant-pluckers, other members of our aristocracy do things rather differently.

Having met Mrs Safra, Mrs Ritchie and Mrs Beckham, I cannot imagine that Lily, Madonna or Victoria will be employing the same kind of domestics as the snooty television Bellamy family. That's why my contemporary version of Upstairs, Downstairs, set in a palatial detached house in the Boltons, west London, will be such a ratings winner. Forget maids, and Kathy Burke, and start imagining live-in yoga teachers, dog-walkers, personal gurus and macrobiotic chefs. The days when Mrs Bridges rolled up her sleeves and got to grips with the pastry now seem laughably quaint. Who worth tens of millions eats anything as fattening as pastry? The rich either have their food delivered or made to the specifications of a personal nutritionist. They eat out, but are never photographed with food in their mouths – which is some achievement. A microwave operator would be more useful than a cook.

It was revealed by Mr Burrell that Diana, Princess of Wales, rarely wore her clothes more than a couple of times, giving them to his wife or selling them at posh second-hand shops. So why employ anyone to press anything if it's never going to get that creased? And since when does anything by Dolce and Gabbana go on the delicate cycle in the washing machine? I don't imagine Princess Kylie needs those tiny shredded outfits hung up on padded hangers. They probably look better if they're chucked on the floor and trashed a bit more.

Modern servants have to operate the shredder, compact the rubbish so that nothing can be identified, programme the VCR and order the champagne. They need to be good at dusting awards rather than porcelain, and excellent drivers. In a recent interview, Robbie Williams confessed he was reduced to driving his expensive cars up and down the road inside the gated community in Los Angeles where he lives as he hasn't got around to passing the driving test.

Nail maintenance is ano-ther new-age servile task. You can't imagine Posh leaves the house without all 10 digits being perfect. I can't wait to earn enough to employ a live-in hair-stylist, a butler to run my bath and bring me a cup of hot water every day and tell me I don't look like something the cat brought in. Sadly, current house prices dictate my downstairs team might have to reside in a garden shed, and I don't think that's a winner. In the meantime, at least I haven't got the problem of anyone selling stories about me and my scone binges.

Numbskulls

Botox injections could be a health risk, according to a report in the British Medical Journal. That's saved me £200 a pop, and the chance to meet a lot of women with frozen faces at a cocktail party where a creepy plastic surgeon lurks in the background. Once you start freezing your face, then it's obvious that the muscles will atrophy. Why not just talk a lot, like me, and firm up the muscles with constant exercise?

I cannot imagine the mentality that thinks poisoning your body is life-enhancing. It's as incomprehensible as those mothers who have their children's ears pierced before the victim is old enough to decide for themselves. Botox is just another form of mutilation, like tongue studs and tattoos. I read recently that Neanderthal man died out because he worked out how to make spears but not how to throw them. Have we progressed much further? Now we know how to perform key-hole surgery, and save the most premature of babies, so that they can grow up in a world where you can choose to remove all form of expression from that most vital of your features, your face.

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Eminem's latest film, 8 Mile, is a hoot. Lauded by the critics in the States, and a box office hit, it opens here in January. At the London Film Festival screening I wasn't disappointed. Imagine the Judy Garland story crossed with Rocky. Our man has one expression – glacial – and a gorgeous backside. The story is risible and the acting wooden. But who cares? The music is great and once you've accepted Kim Basinger, with giant, blonde hair, as his alcoholic trailer-trash mum, the rest seems almost believable. Only in the last 20 minutes, when our man wins a rapping contest à la Sylvester Stallone, do things start to jump. And how camp are his black side-kicks? Have I missed something? I don't think Leo Di Caprio need lose any sleep.