Pretty well everything annoys me. Except me.

What I want to briefly bring before you today, for a bit a mutual annoying in a sharing and caring kind of way, is the issue of talent.

This topic happened to spark my annoy-o-meter yesterday when I read this simple statement by our phone-chucking friend Naomi Campbell (who has noble aspirations to set up a modelling agency in Kenya): "There is lots of talent there".

CUE VOLCANIC ERUPTION !

Now, this is not anything to do with black, white, brown, off white, pink, olive, jaundiced or stuff like that. It is not even to do with the ever-changing standards of beauty. NO! This has got to do with the fact that anyone anywhere can be regarded as TALENTED just because they embody certain genetic characteristics.

THAT'S NOT BLOODY TALENT!

I hate hearing models referred to as "the talent".

I'm sure Naomi Campbell is talented. As a businesswoman.

I am sure Naomi Campbell is talented: at scrubbing loos on community service (and we all know she's gifted with an amount of accuracy when it comes to launching projectiles at employees). But "beauty" is not a talent. It's a ... it's a .... THING! It's this generation's check list for a certain height, a certain shape, a certain colouring. It's more than accidental, of course, because it is a hereditary issue: you could certainly breed for beauty (as is the principal with some animal husbandry). But it ain't talent. No sirree. Not unless you are a scientist working out all the tricky dominant and recessive genes and what traits will be exhibited before you breed a model at your model-breeding farm.

Just so you know, here are some examples of talent: This is talent -

So is this

And this

and definitely this

Talent is all about ability: usually some kind of freaky innate ability to do something that is above average. ABILITY is the key word here.

There. I've had my say and I'm going now because of a stinking headache.

I think too much. It's a curse.

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