Vale Cory Monteith / Finn Hudson (I never learned the difference until now)

When I was a little kid without much of an idea of what an actor was, I assumed they and the characters they portrayed were one and the same. This is why it did my head in when I watched Dean Cain talk about Clark Kent.

Fast-forward to now and I'm not sure I really learned the difference between an actor and his character. This is why I was shocked to the core about the recent death of Glee actor Cory Monteith. When I first read reports: alone, hotel room, no suspicious circumstances, I assumed a suicide rather than an overdose. Apparently, Monteith's struggles with drugs were well-documented. I must have missed those reports in spite of being a rabid Gleek. Maybe I didn't want to know. The idea of Monteith battling these kinds of demons is so profoundly at odds with Finn Hudson, his character, the handsome, popular, all-American teenager on the squeaky clean Fox show. Death by drug overdose makes sense for the Kurt Cobains of the world, but the idea that the man who tenderly serenaded Rachel Berry in Mr Schue's choir room could die this way did my head in just like my revelation about Dean Cain.

Because I didn't know the difference between Cory Monteith and Finn Hudson. A talented performer on the show, a talented performer in real life. In love with a gifted singing ingenue on the show, in love with a gifted singing ingenue in real life (Lea Michele / Rachel Berry, who I can imagine being like her character too: bossy, with vocal gifts oozing out of every pore).

The meaning of the Finn Hudson character and the reason why he was a gift to us Gleeks has already been explored at length, and more articulately by Ben Pobjie. And as for me I'll just try to forget that Cory wasn't Finn and Finn wasn't Cory. I could imagine him cold and alone in his hotel room, or have him in my mind in that other way: forever young, forever in love, forever dancing around Mr Schue's choir room with Rachel / Lea on his awkward, teenage feet.

Forever Young - the rise of the haute kidult

It has been said I have the taste of a nine-year-old. This isn't an insult, it's a fairly good summary of me. The good thing is in my new life in a senior role at a magazine for tweenage girls, I am free at last to unabashedly love the cute stuff - to decorate my desk with Hello Kitty without restraint, to add Blythe dolls and Littlest Pet Shop without shame.

It's also carte blanche to reverse age - to choose childlike things which I've always liked best.

That's not to say it's time to plaster myself with cheap diamantes from Diva (not saying I have anything against Diva, or diamantes, or plastering myself with things). It's more about the somewhat slicker stuff, and I'm not the only one.

There must be huge numbers of people like me - haute kidults, that is, solvent adults with a taste for high-end kiddy kitsch complete with price tag to set it out of reach of bona fide kids except Suri Cruise. How else to explain the popularity of Mawi x Disney Couture, the existence of implausible diamond Hello Kitty jewellery, and the fact the Tokidoki x Karl Lagerfeld figurine (plastic!) costs nearly AU$200? Lagerfeld himself must be young on the inside - he gave his cat, Choupette, an iPad, which sounds like something a child would do.

I am 27 years old. When faced with a big, square and sensible Mulberry Bayswater in thick black leather, I inevitably reached for a raspberry mini Alexa, a handbag so weeny it cannot fit my diary. It occurred to me the Bays was the better investment - the sort of bag that could see me through to age 90 and then some. It also occurred to me that something so practical could make me feel like I was age 90. No, far better to go for a bubblegum-pink shrunken It Bag, one that I lovingly pet as if it were a teacup Yorkie. This is after vetoing a mint green Mulberry with flower clasp - that I feel really IS like a child's bag, that looks like something out of Forever New on a good day. It is so little I have grave fears more than an iPhone could be tucked inside and its discount price tag was still the princely sum of more than AU$400.

Fun fashion is ageless, I think. I never believed in those 'How to dress for your age' articles anyway. Let me wear my cartoon cats and fluffy ears beanies (no matter how much Guardian writer Hadley Freeman decries them). Let me be a haute kidult - I found the fountain of youth and it looks at once cheerful and eye-wateringly expensive.