ALEXANDRA SHULMAN’S NOTEBOOK: Will Noele Gordon’s shampoo and set roll back into fashion?

Whoever thought Crossroads’ Noele Gordon might ever become a style inspiration?

Well she has now, thanks to the one flaw in ITV’s new drama Nolly, starring Helena Bonham Carter in the lead role. Helena is simply too beautiful to play the imperious matriarch of the Crossroads motel.

However, her limpid-eyed, cut-glass beauty has made her version of Noele bewitching to behold.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who, watching Bonham Carter sashay on and off set in a mink cocoon, has been reminded of their own fondness for the voluminous fur coat of old.

Then there are the marvellous peignoirs and housecoats she drifts around her satin-lampshaded apartment in as she lights her endless cigarettes. But most of all, that hair! Bonham Carter’s Noele is rarely seen without her russet tresses set in a blousy confection of rollers and Elnett hairspray .

Helena Bonham Carter (pictured) is bewitching to behold in the role of Noele Gordon in ITV’s new drama Nolly

I’m sure I’m not the only person who, watching Bonham Carter (pictured here with Augustus Prew) sashay on and off set in a mink cocoon, has been reminded of their own fondness for the voluminous fur coat of old

Our contemporary blow-dries and addiction to straighteners and tongs have meant we’ve forgotten about the very real attributes of a shampoo and set. Not for us sitting under a heated helmet with a head full of rollers. The notion is as dated as the doily.

But I think we’ve got that wrong. I remember as a small child watching my mother having her weekly set at the hairdresser. Her hair has never looked better. Now we’ve forgotten, if any of us ever knew, how a good set is simply the greatest escape from thin, lank locks.

If only the look was not so deeply unfashionable. Still, fashion and hair styles do change, as sure as night follows day. And, surely we’re all a little bit over the tonged bob now? I’m not sure teenagers are ever going to embrace the shampoo and set, but perhaps the upcoming middle-aged Love Island series is the time where it can make a comeback

Nolly-style high-heeled mules, capacious kaftans and a pile-up of curls? I for one am absolutely up for it.

Positivity is good… for the bank balance

Last week, I was in Dubai as speaker at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. My sessions may not have been quite as popular as those of David Walliams, whose book-signing queues had under-tens spiralling around the festival site, but my audience in one session was no doubt boosted by having Kaushal Modha, the South Asian wellness and beauty influencer, on my panel.

She has some two million social-media followers and, along with her wellness guru husband Vex King, featured on the cover of You magazine a few weeks back. Kaushal was there to promote her first book, a gratitude journal.

Now, I know I am behind many curves, but I had never heard of a gratitude journal, although it seems they are becoming as popular as cookery books.

My idea of a journal is where I record what I did on various days or even describe how I felt about the events that took place. It’s a record of life, both the bad news and good.

But gratitude journals are quite different. They only have space for positivity – no doubt, heartache or anxieties. If you break up with your boyfriend, that is not a difficulty – it’s an opportunity to make a note to yourself to embrace the new. Or at least the pain.

It made me reflect on what a generational difference there is between myself, a Baby Boomer and the Millennials and Gen Z. (Younger people, in other words.)

My lot generally say it as we see it, which might well be critical and unvarnished.

This is a different approach to a generation who flood Instagram with empowering and supportive messages to all and sundry. They are helped by these journals which encourage listing reasons to be cheerful at the start of every day and reasons to be grateful at the end of every day.

To be honest, I don’t know if one is better than the other, but I just wish I had it in me to publish a gratitude journal, since clearly that is where the money lies.

Ageing rock stars face up to the past

Much fuss has been made about the amount of work Madonna (pictured here at the Grammys) has had done

Much fuss has been made about the amount of work Madonna has had done on her appearance and her betrayal of the sisterhood.

But it would be wrong to think that women musicians alone embrace cosmetic intervention. A friend of mine who specialises in advising people on where to find this kind of help told me recently that among her regular clients are elderly rock stars before they go on world tours. Hair colour, Botox, fillers, facial treatments – the whole shebang is employed to minimise the effects of many years of carousing before they get on the private jet.

ISIS Bride should be tried in Britain

Having watched the documentary and listened to the current BBC podcast series on Shamima Begum, I am firmly convinced she should be given back her British citizenship and tried in a British court.

Yes, she left the country to join Islamic State at 15 and still shows neither love nor enthusiasm either for the UK or her poor family, but leaving her mouldering in a refugee camp, albeit one that clearly facilitates blow-dries and manicures, can only increase the sense of alienation that led to her leaving.

It’s hard to warm to the young woman who has a sneering smile, an apparent lack of horror of the terrorist caliphate’s atrocities and no convincing remorse.

How much of her reaction is due to the trauma she has undergone over the years there, and how much is the person she is, has yet to be discovered. But she was born here, brought up here and we should take responsibility for the chilling person she appears to have become.

A name now as rare as a Siberian tiger

When I’m in the queue for coffee and they ask for my name, I always answer Jane. Why? Because the name is easy to pronounce but also now as rare as the Siberian tiger, so there’s never any confusion over whose black Americano they are delivering.

Dubai is enough to drive you FROM drink 

There’s nothing like settling the alcohol bill in Dubai to make you rethink your drinking habits. Booze is incredibly expensive there.

The first thing I did on coming back was order several boxes of alcohol-free beer in an attempt to retrain my consumption.

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