Janet Street-Porter: Nothing to lose but your plastic bags

The 20th century will be remembered by social historians as the era when shopping became a hobby in its own right, just like sport did the century before. It started with logos. Rappers iconised them and kids fought over which ones you wore. Every brand – from the high street upwards – emblazons a logo over their products, as if it's the only way we can have an identity.

Frankly, I would not step across the threshold of my front door wearing the name of someone else, but that's not an issue for the majority of the world's poorest consumers. And if you can't afford the products, then at least you could carry around a Gucci carrier bag or a Harrods shopper and pretend to the rest of us that you were flush with cash.

One of the reasons I loathe fashion's current obsession with handbags that cost over £1,000 is that they represent the most vulgar way possible of flaunting your wealth. Utterly without any merit, totally impractical, festooned with an obscene amount of decoration and generally fashioned from the skin of rare reptile, the designer bag just about sums up the huge gap between the people who've got too much and those who have almost nothing. Designer bags are for people who wouldn't be seen dead carrying anything as utilitarian as an ordinary plastic bag – these women can afford to have their groceries delivered, and ease their social consciences, by signing up to box schemes of organic veg whereby lots of dirty turnips are delivered in fashionable, recycled brown cartons.

But for most of us plastic bags are part of life's necessities. Burdened with briefcases, luggage and the essentials of daily commuting, how else are we meant to carry our daily shopping? Subversive characters resort to turning their free plastic bags inside out so that the logos can't be read – a small protest against the dominance of superstores.

Britain has been curiously slow to realise the damage that plastic bags do to the environment. Shop at a superstore on the Continent and you won't be offered any at all. Now London has joined 80 towns around Britain in pledging to ban shops from giving out free plastic bags.

Don't expect this move to be welcomed by the big retailers like Tesco, Sainsbury or Marks and Spencer. In spite of their much publicised environmentally aware campaigns, they still believe that if they do not offer plastic bags, we will not spend in their stores. With rising food prices, they cannot afford to alienate a single customer. Instead, M & S plan to charge 5p for a bag, and Tesco give out loyalty points if you re-use your bag – but these are hardly major deterrents for most shoppers.

Biodegradable plastic is one option, recycled paper another. Why do supermarkets hand out weeny plastic bags when you buy a sandwich or a lunchtime wrap that's already securely sealed up in plastic? It's a no-brainer. Secretly, I think that stores still love all that free advertising that comes from the prolific use of carriers – and that this is what is really behind their reluctance to ban plastic.

It's easy to start collecting cloth bags. I have a whole range – picked up at the Ravello Festival in Italy, a market in Faversham, from the launch of Architecture week in London last summer, and at the British pavilion during the Venice Biennale. Cloth bags don't split, don't leak, roll up small, and are capable of carrying heavy bottles and books. In short, surely it's time to declare the plastic bag as passé as the logo?

Hail the queens of the jungle

Having worked behind the scenes in television and participated in I'm a Celebrity three years ago, I'm fascinated to see the format reinvented each time. This year's series features a species dubbed the "alpha females", led by motor-mouth Janice Dickinson, above, with new-age PR (and my former secretary) Lynne Franks battling it out by the campfire. They've been joined by Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins, the woman who says she can't stand fatties or northerners.

Successful television talk shows are all hosted by men, but this wonderful combination of characters finally proves that smart women make the best reality show contenders. Rodney Marsh? Who's he?

* I've just spent a few days in northern Italy – at a no-nonsense spa, where inhabitants roamed the hotel and reception area wearing white bathrobes, many of these people with weird tin-foil caps on their heads. Not a place where you'd expect to find former world leaders, but who should I run into as I was checking in (and agreeing to forego salt, sugar, bread, wheat, dairy and booze throughout my stay) but the former French President Jacques Chirac.

Looking a bit wrinkly and reptilian, he swooshed towards his limousine clutching a small poodle, followed by a porter wheeling a large trolley stacked to the top with Louis Vuitton suitcases and Chanel suit bags. Later, I encountered another ageing Frenchman, who was wearing a tweed hacking jacket and lovingly holding a white poodle to his chest. The poodle was sporting small blue bows either side of its head.

Mr Blair wisely embarks on tours of housing estates in China. I can't see him opting for colonic irrigation or a poodle.