Star turn

With all the gongs handed out at this month's glitzy Oscars ceremony, perhaps there should have been one more: Best Performance by a Nanny in Hollywood. It could have been awarded to Suzanne Hansen, who's just published her memoirs of working for the rich and famous in You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again.

Suzanne was a starry-eyed 19-year-old when she left her small town of Cottage Grove, Oregon ('where the highlight of a typical resident's week was bingo at the Elks Lodge with a $250 pot'), clutching one of the first certificates issued by the new Northwest Nannies Institute, and went job-hunting in the hills of Hollywood. Though she wrote this book some years later, it's done from the view of a country girl who never loses her sharp eye for the contrasts between the lifestyles of ordinary mortals and those of the rich - and their incredible stinginess amid the luxury. And though each chapter is studded with stars, many readers will recognise the painful truths of the nanny-employer relationship that exist in any number of places besides Tinseltown.