AMANDA PLATELL: Mums need us more than ever on Mother’s Day this year amid the coronavirus crisis

For mums across the land tomorrow, Mothering Sunday will be perhaps the most poignant — and unnerving — they’ve ever experienced. 

So many elderly parents will be kept away, in self-isolation, from those they care for most. There will be no parties for them, no flowers hand-delivered to mother by those who once depended on her. 

No Sunday lunches with the clan, no chance to hug their families. Not even the opportunity for children to say, in person, how much they love their mum. Even those who live a few doors away are having to cancel gatherings. 

All they can do is wave at each other through the window. The picture in yesterday’s Mail of that elderly couple bending down in their dressing gowns and beaming at their two great-grandchildren from behind the closed glass doors of their home was unbearably moving. 

Ray and Theresa Cossey were pressing one hand each against the plate glass so the little ones could do the same to them from the other side. Heartbreaking in many ways, but also heartwarming to see the bond between the generations. 

Perhaps because I was so aware that tomorrow is Mother’s Day, I was most drawn to great-granny Theresa’s face. 

She looks a lot like my Mum did — Mum smiled like that whenever she saw any of us three children or her five grandchildren. 

Whatever we do, wherever we roam, a mother’s love is unconditional, unextinguishable. They are the ones who are always our rocks. 

Yet now, for so many, they are the vulnerable ones. Coronavirus has given us all a shocking taste of our own mortality — but the fear we feel for older generations in our families is more intense and palpable. 

Ray and Theresa Cossey were pressing one hand each against the plate glass so the little ones could do the same to them from the other side. Heartbreaking in many ways, but also heartwarming to see the bond between the generations

This is the generation that imparts the wisdom and common sense that can see us through dark days. The quiet generation that doesn’t complain, that ‘gets on with life’.

The generation that, on Mother’s Day, will feel the agony of absence far more than we do. That is why it is so important for everyone to make a gargantuan effort tomorrow. 

Phone, Skype, whatever … just make sure you spend time with them. Even if you can’t step inside, you can stand at their door 6ft away — and tell your mum not just that you love them, but also why. 

Or just press your palms against the window pane — like those children did with great-granny Theresa.

Experts claim the happiest people are those who tend allotments. What tosh! 

The nation’s most famous allotmenteer is the leek-growing Jeremy Corbyn, the most curmudgeonly man one could ever meet.

Nicole Scherzinger says she refuses to be objectified because she made her name in the Pussycat Dolls wearing very few clothes

Nicole washed up

Nicole Scherzinger says she refuses to be objectified because she made her name in the Pussycat Dolls wearing very few clothes. 

Two decades on, she’s still scantily clad, this time bending over a sink — with bobbing, impossibly perfect breasts for a 41-year-old — as she sings her latest single React while washing her hands against the pandemic. 

React? 

Well, viewers aren’t going to be looking at her handwashing technique.

With no Premier League football until April 30 at the very earliest, Match Of The Day host Gary Lineker is reduced to doing a podcast in his kitchen talking about glorious games past. 

Is he still getting his £1.75million BBC salary for that? 

Two decades on, she’s still scantily clad, this time bending over a sink — with bobbing, impossibly perfect breasts for a 41-year-old — as she sings her latest single React while washing her hands against the pandemic

Do it your way, Reese

Despite having come out very early in support of the #MeToo movement, Reese Witherspoon is still attacked for not ‘revealing all’ about her abusers when she was a young actress. 

She says that in her career she has relied on her humour and intelligence and always kept her clothes on. Who has the right to demand she bares all now? #NotMe.

Westminster Wars

Apologising for the Windrush scandal and the cruelty inflicted upon decent folk invited into Britain then deported as illegals, Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was truly sorry for ‘the pain, suffering and misery’ inflicted upon thousands.  

Coincidence or conspiracy that this truly shocking report was quietly released mid Covid-19 mania?

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has become a star turn in this crisis. As reassuring as Casualty’s emergency nurse Charlie Fairhead, he’s the kind of man you want to see when you open your eyes in A&E. 

Apologising for the Windrush scandal and the cruelty inflicted upon decent folk invited into Britain then deported as illegals, Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was truly sorry for ‘the pain, suffering and misery’ inflicted upon thousands

Who would have ever have imagined softly spoken, balding Matt had such a reassuring bedside manner.

A new book reveals the grandiose former Speaker John Bercow raged against a female aide after his toothpaste tube was confiscated at airport security as it was too big.

That must be the first time Bercow has had anything ruled ‘too big’ — except, of course, his ego.

A modern lack of substance

After her A Woman Of Substance novel sold 30million copies, author Barbara Taylor Bradford decided to revisit the male character she thought was underdeveloped in the original about heroine Emma. 

The prequel was to be called Blackie And Emma — Blackie was a dashing young Irishman with hair ‘as black as ebony’ and smoldering eyes like ‘greats chunks of glittering coal’. 

But his name’s now not acceptable, so the title’s going to be Shane O’Neill And Emma Harte. In this PC world, better not have any plans to revisit Black Beauty. 

Turning 60, This Morning’s Ruth Langsford says she’s excited about the big Six-0h, that she’s very happy with her family life and long marriage to Eamonn Holmes. 

I’ve worked with them and seen the genuine love between them. How different from that other sofa queen Fern Britton, 62, who divorced, saying freedom from the shackles of marriage has made her feel ‘invincible’. 

What’s the betting Ruth has the last laugh.

 The Supersofties

In keeping with the times, the comic-book franchise Marvel which brought us the Incredible Hunk has released its latest ‘woke’ superheroes. Safespace can create pink force fields to combat bullying. 

His non-binary twin Snowflake can make blades from snow to attack his, or her, enemy. 

As someone who slept as a child in her ninja pyjamas clutching the deadly throwing stars called shuriken, I despair. What next? A genderfluid Hulk, bursting out of a dress as a jolly green giant?

Safespace can create pink force fields to combat bullying. His non-binary twin Snowflake can make blades from snow to attack his, or her, enemy