Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan's sex scene retort was perfect - Christa Ackroyd

Why do you think sarongs were invented ? But then why do we give a damn? Because we have been taught to.

Now the sun is shining, the sunscreen is hopefully being slapped on (and don’t forget to check the sell by date) we will inevitably be inundated with body perfect models (whose job it is to be exactly that with a little or even a lot of help from airbrushing) telling us what we should aspire to look like. Or could look like if we bought this, ate that, exercised in this way or splashed out on the latest quick fix.

Let us not forget the weight loss industry is making billions and billions of pounds from preying on the very insecurities that stop so many of us stripping off and running half naked down that beach into the sea.

What I mean to say is with a perfectly normal body that may fluctuate over time or even after a pretty damn good holiday. Because guess what, that’s life. And how come it is, by and large, a mostly female obsession? Because we are daft enough to buy into it, that’s why.

Which is why this week all hail my new heroine Nicola Coughlan, aka Lady Whistledown, aka Penelope Featherington of Bridgerton fame. Oh how I love this woman. And not for the reasons most observers have pointed out, her body shape.

I love her for the force of nature she is, for the kind of sharp wit she displays and for virtually saying that anyone commenting on her size can go to hell. She is doing pretty well for herself thank you very much.

The obsession with how Nicola/Penelope looks is at the very heart of Bridgerton. Why do you think Pen uses her obvious brain to write the secret diaries that have been at the heart of the three seasons of this knock out Netflix offering which by this time of writing this new series alone has already been viewed by 50 million people?

Why do you think the story line has her write herself off as the ‘spinster’ she is described as, having failed at three attempts on the ‘marriage mart’? And yet she has not failed in life.

The men, or at least the man she wants for herself, admit they are secretly jealous of her sharp tongue and even sharper pen. How she looks doesn’t even come into it. The true message is that men in her day didn’t want an equal they wanted a wife. And Penelope is so much more than that.

But it is the bank handed compliments being showered on the woman who plays her, a woman so comfortable in her own skin, that worries me and obviously annoys her.

Let us be as frank as Nicola herself possibly might want to be, apart from the fact that she is engaged in a mammoth round of publicity interviews. Most of the comments on social media, no matter how well intended, make reference to her dress size and not her acting ability.

Only last week she was told she must have been ‘brave’ to take her clothes off for a sex scene. Now as far as I remember there have been a lot of sex scenes in Bridgerton and none have been described as ‘brave’. Raunchy, yes. Sexy, certainly but not ‘brave’.

And Nicola knew exactly what they were hinting at. That a woman who is not the conventional ‘skinny Minnie’ actress must have thought long and hard and even worried before baring all. Not a bit of it. In fact it was at Nicola’s suggestion.

Her retort was as delicious as what we witnessed on our screens. You are so right she said. And then followed it up with the most perfect put down I have heard in a long time while smiling all the while.

'You know, it is hard because I think women with my body type - women with perfect breasts - we don't get to see ourselves onscreen enough!'

And that dear readers is perfection, as perfect as her perfect breasts and her perfect acting skills. What Nicola is doing has nothing to do with beauty, or our false opinion of beauty.

It is reclaiming all our bodies with confidence and also making us question what is it we are really buying here when it comes to the commercial world of ‘thinness’.

In the very same week senior medics warned of the dangers of obtaining weight loss drugs on the internet after studies revealed even fat loss injections were being handed over without a GP’s say so and let’s face it often without good reason.

They are being bought by women and girls who simply want to lose a few pounds before they hit the beach. And yet that was never what they were intended for. These drugs such as Ozempic were developed as a treatment for diabetes.

They control the appetite and as a result many people lost weight and so demand has skyrocketed after several stars including Oprah and Sharon Osbourne (who now says she is too thin) admitted to using them. They are not cheap. If not prescribed they costs hundreds of pounds.

But then so do all the other pills and potions being pushed at us. I have no right to object to anyone making their own decisions as to what to take and why. It is their body and their insecurities. Apart from the fact that supplies of these drugs are in such short supply that those who would benefit from what they were intended for are said to be struggling to get hold of them.

It’s also the message that while Oprah has been a powerful advocate of body acceptance she has now ditched her Ambassador’s role for Weightwatchers and turned to the latest way to lose weight as if unaccepting of the body that has served her well and one which millions of women can identify with. It certainly hasn’t held her back in her career.

There is a huge difference between being unhealthy and carrying weight, which is often perfectly normal and perfectly healthy, we just don’t see it as such. As long as you are fit and well who is deciding how we should look? Society that’s who. And by what judgement?

The BMI index that demands we are a certain weight for our height was developed a hundred or more years ago and doesn’t take into account different bones structures as diet improves. Obviously diabetes needs tackling. That’s why these drugs are made.

Not to squeeze into a bikini on the beach. I have known larger women who are the most beautiful women in the room. I have seen women starve themselves half to death to get into size eight jeans who frankly look as though they just need a good meal.

Nicola Coughlan is magnifient. Her skin glows, her body undulates, her screen presence is, as she describes her breasts, perfect. But she is still all too rare a being. A woman who knows who she is and where she is going.

And that talk about her dress size has absolutely nothing to do with her beauty or her talent.