It is always instructive to hear from turbocapitalist fanny-steamer magnate Gwyneth Paltrow, whether it be about the desirability of $956 bog roll or the dream of a zero-carb economy. But next week promises to be a particularly special time for the UK, as madam’s wellness summit comes to London.

The event is called In Goop Health, but is specifically billed as a summit. Cost? £1,000 for a day ticket, or £4,500 for the weekend, which includes a two-night hotel stay. I don’t think your wallet would ever have felt cleaner. Or, indeed, more rinsed. If I had to pick the summit the Goop summit seems most like, I would probably go for Munich 1938. One party – the customer – is going to come away imagining they’ve got something worthwhile out of it, while the other party – a madly revanchist would-be empire – is going to be laughing all the way to the central bank. “Did you have a good time, Neville?” “Yes! I hold in my hand a £27 Psychic Vampire Repellent. It says here that you simply ‘spray around the aura to protect from psychic attack and emotional harm’.”
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It is extremely hard to choose a favourite among these reports, but for me, the Teen Vogue one probably edges it. A kind of prose colonic, this science-free quasi-press release gives everything about the summit the slavish credence it doesn’t deserve. Sample text includes: “It became clear that radical self-acceptance is a core tenet of Goop’s evolving wellness code.” Mmm. It’s not that radical, is it, if you dropped at least a grand to be there, and someone’s trying to flog you an ear-seeder while telling you it’ll balance your nervous system?

Speaking of which, one of the summit’s events is a financial workshop described as “entering a realm of vulnerability”. Well, quite. I hope nobody mentions the elephant in the room: namely, that everyone in it has parted with a grand or a lot more to submit to the “ultimate retail experience”, where you can pick up something called sex dust within touching distance of a stall selling restored farm tables. A juxtaposition that reminds me of a Victoria Wood line: “Why, when you go into a department store, no matter which door you choose, is it always the leotard and handbag department? Why do they put them together? It’s not like you’ve ever bought a leotard and thought: ‘Ooh, now I must get a handbag to go with it.’” RIP to a comic genius who made women feel a billion times better about their lives than – hang on, let me get my readers on – a 24-carat gold face-sculpting bar or 10-day extreme cleanse.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2019/jun/20/roll-up-roll-up-for-gwyneth-paltrows-great-london-goop-summit