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My ten year old wants me to help him revise for exams. I explain that Mummy's got to save the planet first

Published 17 January 2000

As you know, the job of a celebrity is to look permanently euphoric so, when pictured alongside corporate products, they give the impression that buying the product brings happiness. Problems arise when these same celebrities start banging on about the rainforests, the state of architecture, the Buddha - this breaks the unwritten rule on being well-behaved billboards. As a result, the media rear up on their hind legs and shriek: "What on earth has that spoilt little sod got to complain about? Isn't being rich and famous enough?" A posse is immediately despatched in search of a personality disorder.

Now, I am not a celebrity, but I am married to an aristocrat, which means I'm also supposed to be grateful and grin a lot. But I don't. I bang on about ecology because the hand that feeds all of us aristo-celebs also doubles as a fist that is demolishing the planet and its people for the sake of short-term profit. I am, therefore, known to all and sundry as the Mad Marchioness, the Whacko Worcester. That's why I'm not grinning; I'm snarling!

In real life, I am a wife and a mother of three. And I am also a human being who cares passionately for the world. So the decision that faces me every day is which of these three good causes should come first: hubby, kiddies or the great wide world? Generally, I have to tell you, the great wide world wins. The guilt, though, is enormous.

It's morning and Bobby, my ten year old, asks me not to go away today so that I can help him revise for his exams. I explain that "Mummy's got a few things on - first, she's got to save the planet . . ." He looks at Mummy as if she's lost her mind and relents. I explain that I've got to go to dinner with the guy who tops the Times list of richest people in the country - not because we're pals, but because I have designs on his dosh, some of which I plan to divert into our local food campaign. To that end, I will also attend a dinner to mark the launch of the Environmental Research Unit at Oxford with professors and ecologists. But only if I know what a "lounge suit" looks like. When I'm finally dressed, I twirl for my PA, Lysana, and ask her what she thinks. She approves but suggests that the dog-chewed clogs are perhaps not quite the right image.

That night I attend a lecture and dinner at the launch in Oxford. Isolated in a small rural village in the Cotswolds, I occasionally need a blast from like-minded campaigners. At the lecture I get an infusion of the kind of eco-debate that always stokes my fires: extraordinary statistics about the rape and pillage of our precious natural world. The growing tendency for universities to be corporate-funded means that millions of pounds are funnelled into educating people to think that they have the right to exploit the world's natural resources to compete in the now global economy and fill shareholders' pockets: we have biotechnologists pushing genetic engineering, engineers building vast dams, nuclear physicists and agricultural experts . . . but, as Rousseau said, "we no longer have a citizen among us".

I sit next to a former dean of the university who says that an aristocrat environmentalist is like having a 12-bore shotgun as opposed to a 2.2. I'd like to think of myself as a rocket launcher, but that time has yet to come.

When I was acting, and when I had first married Harry, I was hounded by the tabloids. Now I'm trying my best to exploit the exploiters, to highlight the Big Question not on the agenda at Seattle: is economic "progress" killing the planet?

Later, I meet a few eco-friends in the pub to discuss the state of the world. One pal has just launched a new company that markets solar energy; another is an under-cover camerawoman who has photographed security guards' violence at various road-building confrontations and demonstrators at GMO field-trials. My kind of people!

The next day - lunch with Dad. In the past, people have rightly accused me of being obsessively insistent about the plight of the Earth with people who have no interest in ecology. Well, at today's lunch I prove that I am well on the way to healthy, vacant-eyed conformity: not one word do I utter. Perhaps part of my self-restraint is the result of having OD'd on eco-chat last night and I know that at tonight's fund-raising dinner in Kent I'll be free to rant to my heart's content.

Thankfully my host and his two daughters think our local food campaign is brilliant. They agree that importing 47 million kilograms of butter while simultaneously exporting 49 million in one year proves that our "prudent" economy is being run by raving lunatics. I move on to point out that avoiding the rapacious super-marketing middlemen would provide consumers with fresh, chemical-free food at affordable prices, would lower farmers' packaging and transport costs, while removing them from dependency on unreliable and distorting government subsidies so that they would be sure of a far more secure income . . . Blue in the face, I pause for breath. The room is silent but for the sound of soup spoons on soup bowls. Looking down momentarily, I meet the earnest gaze of a King Charles spaniel - at least he's been paying attention!

The Marchioness of Worcester is associate director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)

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