Unproductive labour

Forget financial services management consultancy. Forget even colour consultant, a job I saw mentioned in passing in a newspaper article the other day, provoking the thought that it was the sort of job that only exists in London. Not to mention lifestyle consultant, as in Cherie Blair and Carole Caplin. Eric Clapton remarked of cocaine that it was God's way of telling you that you had too much money: lifestyle consultant ought to have the same effect. I'm not kidding. What does a lifestyle consultant do? They tell you how to spend your money. If you need somebody to tell you how to spend it, then pretty much by definition, you've got too much.

No, my current favourite on the list of Professions You Never Realised We Were In Need Of cropped up in the puff for something called Get A New Life that my health and temper make it unwise for me to watch on BBC2 tonight.

Series offering advice on how to set up a new life abroad, with professional relocators Scott Huggins and Melissa Porter. The Kew family try out life in Brittany and they're not going to let their lack of French get in the way. But jobs are scarce, and the new schools prove difficult for the four children.

This is funny in all sorts of ways, not least because if you threw in a career in publishing and a cottage in the Cotswolds it'd be the blurb for a chicklit novel. (I have started reading these aloud in bookshops. This would not be with the purpose of encouraging people to buy them.) But what, in the name of God, is a professional relocator? And do you get feng shui thrown in with that?