Sound advice for both sexes

I have just given a handy hint to Libby on the subject of backsides and the best way to present them. I am something of an expert, you see.

The last photo was of a row of ladies whose rear-ends have been made generically uniform by being stuffed into blue denim, making it very difficult to answer your questions about which one I would rather stalk follow. To be blunt (as if any pre-Kim Kardashian man has ever answered the question, "Does my bum look big in this?" with a "Yes") it is quite easy to assess the volume of each arse, just impossible to guess how it is going to settle once released from the Levi's.

I have spent many years researching the subject, and my findings (to be published as a scientific journal very soon) are that a loose-fitting, silk crepe skirt or dress would compliment any backside, with the possible exception of John Gray's.

The trouble is that silk crepe is primarily a tactile textile, and we all know what happens these days if you put your intuition to the ultimate test. I have never yet seen a backside which is so attractive that it is worth a six-month prison sentence and a lifetime on an offenders register if you do anything other than look at it.

Also, there is only a certain of time that you may look at it without being placed on the same register, but the semi-permissible duration is not written down in any manual. My advice is: Don't stop walking and turn around in the street; Don't stand there with your arms folded, staring down at it at parties; Always use an averted glance which is not noticed by the recipient (if possible), and -  above all - don't talk about it no matter how drunk you are.

I have fallen foul of my own advice many times over the years, and the last one was when I thought I would pay what I considered to be a compliment to a 60 year-old woman who was the advisor on 'Women's Issues' to Ken Livingstone when he was both Mayor of London and previously on the left-wing council whose offices were on the South Bank. I must have been half-drunk and suicidally depressed at the time.

She spun round and slapped me hard on the cheek, spitting out vitriolic warnings as to what would happen to me if I ever did something like that again. Needless to say, I didn't.

Someone once asked Captain Beefheart why he always wore baggy trousers, and his answer was, "I don't want to put my balls in a cloth window."