According to this week’s Grazia magazine, everyone is talking about the actor Milla Jovovich’s incredible pregnancy weight gain. I want to make a snide remark here about the trivial concerns of the modern media, but I’m not kidding around - five stone in seven months. Seeing the pictures, you will let out a spontaneous, “Oh, my good Christ.” It’s not so much the shape of the actor - which is pretty much the shape of any above averagely tall, heavily pregnant lady - more the effect of seeing a person who was famous for being thin, walking around not thin. It’s just weird, like seeing Big Ben in a giant sock or a mouse in a handbag.

Of many priceless remarks from the model-cum-actor, my favourite is, “My friend and I went round Saint Sulpice cemetery, where French royalty are buried. On the way back, I said to her, ‘Let’s eat like kings!’ I was craving bone marrow and we scoured the whole of Paris searching for the leg of a cow.” And you thought it was impossible to put on weight in an affected, high-fashion way …

Now, let’s run through the normal conventions of a celebrity pregnancy - they do not whack on weight like ordinary women and they hide in high-security spas for those awkward is-she-isn’t-she months, emerging with perfect seven-month bumps looking like the proverbial python who has swallowed a football. This has been the case for the past 14 years - I can place it exactly because I remember having a conversation at university, pondering the demise of the modest-pregnancy-smock (favoured by Lady Di and her contemporaries). The modern celeb eschews the modest smock for the simple reason that it is impossible to see what is going on under it, and so a waste of her efforts to stay entirely fat-free.

But there are exceptions. I shall run you through them: first, there is the person who is so tiny to begin with that any weight gain at all represents a 100% increase in her BMI, and changes her appearance so radically that she can no longer use her own passport. Kate Hudson put on 70lb during the gestation of her first born, but she only weighed about 90lb beforehand. She claimed at the time to love her “womanly curves”, but I think it’s fair to say that she didn’t look beefy so much as possessed. With the rider that I know nothing about Hudson’s eating habits, you do tend to find this sort of preggers-star dropping the weight very fast after delivery, because she was in the grip of a demon invasion rather than a habitual overeater.

Second, there is the star who has been ruling her appetite with Stalinist vigilance since she was 13, and suddenly lets go a bit. She isn’t so much eating for two, as speed-eating every single second helping she has refused for two decades. I will hazard that Jovovich falls into this category, but the queen in this category was Elizabeth Hurley, whose pre-pregnancy diet tips were legendary for their nuttiness (eg, eat with a child’s knife and fork so you don’t put so much in your mouth. Yes, really. She would take junior cutlery to restaurants). She gained an unspecified amount of weight during her confinement and managed to dodge the paparazzi so effectively that no photographic trace remains. But her excess weight was such that she ended up moving in with Elton John for four months post-partum because her own household security was insufficient to keep the paps from getting a look-see at her “womanly curves”.

Third, there is the star who is Welsh, and who finds that fat, which has always wanted her, wants her more in pregnancy only (eg, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Charlotte Church).

Fourth, there is the naturally slim star who has never given her shape a second thought, assuming that you just eat when hungry, and then get caught out by the giant baby-making appetite (Zoe Ball).

The thing is, they all lose it again, in the end - whether at Elton’s or at the local branch of WeightWatchers (that’s what Zeta-Jones did). So I think more celebrities should embrace the opportunity for heft, since the only other time they will get one is if someone remakes Bridget Jones and Renee Zellwegger is busy.

If you will permit me a brief excursion into the world of medicine, the word is that one should gain between 24lb and 35lb, to account for the baby’s weight, placenta, amniotic fluid, extra blood supply, heavier breasts and maternal fat stores laid down for breastfeeding. Pressed on the matter, the official advice is that you should neither eat more in early pregnancy nor gain too much weight - the eating for two should all be in the last trimester, to account for your lumbering shape, and the weight gain should mostly be in the middle trimester, when the foetus has its growth spurt.

All this is really irritating and, I am almost certain, not true - you can spend the whole first trimester berating yourself because you are famished and eating 3,000 calories a day, only to find that in the last trimester you have such bad indigestion that you can barely eat at all. Breastfeeding can shift a lot of weight, fast, partly because you are producing food for someone else to eat, and partly because it kills your appetite while you are doing it, which I think is nature’s way of stopping you from getting crumbs in your baby’s ears. Don’t worry, Milla. Eat as much marrow as you like.

Proposals to slash the numbers of junior doctors from overseas coming to train in the UK were put forward by the government yesterday in an attempt to preserve jobs for the rising numbers of British medical graduates. The health minister, Ben Bradshaw, said that if overseas applicants were preventing those educated here from getting specialist training places, “then it is only right that we should consider what needs to be done”.

The government is proposing that doctors from countries outside the EU should not be considered for a job unless there are no qualified applicants from the UK or from elsewhere in Europe, an unlikely scenario given the popularity of medical training. The UK now has 6,451 medical school places, compared with 3,749 in 1997, and each student can cost up to 250,000 to train, said Mr Bradshaw.

He was speaking as Sir John Tooke published the results of his independent inquiry into the chaos this year when the computerised application scheme for junior doctors seeking to train to be consultants had to be scrapped. One of the reasons for the problems, said Sir John, was the unexpectedly large number of overseas doctors applying.

But he made it clear that the problems went far beyond this. Although he declined to apportion blame to individuals, he said both the Department of Health and the medical profession had been found wanting. It had been “a deeply damaging episode for British medicine”, he said. Reforms of medical training, which had been in the pipeline for some years, as well as the flawed online medical training application service (MTAS), were rushed through without proper preparation.

The furore over MTAS ran for months, with highly qualified junior doctors threatening to go abroad because they had not been called for a single interview. Eventually MTAS, which had been intended to simplify and centralise applications for training posts, was scrapped.

But the Tooke inquiry criticisms were also levelled at the quality of the proposed training for doctors, something which the junior doctors’ protest group Remedy UK highlighted yesterday. “This is a blow-by-blow account of failed leadership in what was an ‘emperor’s new clothes’ situation this year. It was blindingly obvious the reforms were doomed to failure, yet the government political agenda steamrolled over common sense,” said Matt Jameson-Evans, co-founder of Remedy UK.

Sir John said this year’s recruitment problems would recur next year and thereafter if the status of overseas doctors was not quickly resolved. Under his proposals, UK medical students would automatically get a first-year hospital training place on graduation, which would give them a head start over even European candidates.

Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association, emphasised the importance of doctors being involved in the management of the health service.

It’s a challenge that most universities face - how to get their students out of bed and into the study hall. Today the University of Salford may have hit upon an effective solution: get Johnny Marr to give the lectures.

The legendary guitarist - whose career has taken him from the Smiths, through Electronic to, most recently, Modest Mouse - has been announced as Salford’s new professor of music. Not just an honorary title, Marr’s responsibilities will include hosting workshops on the composition and performance of popular music.

Speaking this morning, Marr confessed his pleasure at his new musical direction. “Salford University is offering some fantastic opportunities to students in music. It is an honour to be appointed as a professor and I’m excited at the prospect of being able to make a contribution.”

The 43 year-old has a long association with the historically run-down area of Greater Manchester where the university is located. Born in nearby Ardwick, he helped to immortalise the area when the Smiths posed outside Salford Lads Club on the inside cover of their 1985 album, The Queen is Dead.

Neither is it the first time Marr has visited the university. He played there with the Smiths in 1986, a gig which he regards as one of the best he ever played.

“The PA had to be tied down because the floor was bouncing up so high that the stage was practically falling to pieces,” he said.

After Marr’s songwriting partnership with Morrissey came to an end, he went on to form Electronic with Bernard Sumner of New Order.

A singer, keyboardist and harmonica player, he has also been a sought-after session musician, touring, writing and recording with Bryan Ferry, the Pretenders, Black Grape and Oasis among many others.

John Sweeney, from the University’s school of media, music and performance, said: “Johnny is a revered guitarist and composer and is held in the highest esteem by many of his fellow performers.

“At the moment he is back at the height of his considerable powers, so it is a tremendous opportunity for our students to gain from his expertise and experience.

“He has so much to give. Students lucky enough to benefit from Johnny’s appointment are in for something special.”