From our armchair correspondent, somewhere in north London. Non-British readers may find this post completely indecipherable ;-)
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I have already mentioned that I read both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail and that the latter newspaper is in the grip of a long standing obsession with the female bottom. Well on Monday, as I opened my Daily Mail, I thought with any luck it would also be an outstanding B-day (bottom-day..Ed.). Almost every day is a B-day of some sort where the Daily Mail is concerned but B-days for its male readers and sub-editors to treasure come only so often. As it turns out, bottom-wise, today's Daily Mail is only so-so. There are two profiles of bottoms of no great interest. In a complete reversal of form the Daily Telegraph - which ordinarily only prints pictures of Renaissance or Impressionist bottoms - had a picture with three bottoms in it. For the Telegraph to out-bottom the Mail is the media equivalent of no-hoper Snow Knight leading the field from start to finish to win the Epsom Derby in 1971. There are probably still a few bookmakers left who pray to this horse's memory.

To appreciate in full the delicious irony of this unlikely occurrence one has to know that the Daily Mail, which regards itself as a quality newspaper for all that it is tabloid in ormat, is the humbug to the Nth power in the matter of pornography. While it feeds its readership with an unrelenting diet of titillation (a policy that has provided it with a circulation about double that of the broadsheet Daily Telegraph) it condemns pornography with a fervour rarely seen since the mad monk Savonarola organised the Bonfire of the Vanities in 1495. It once published an editorial criticising an Archbishop of Canterbury for complaining about barbarous conditions in British prisons when he should be concerning himself with the scandalous availability of porn magazines to prisoners. It also ran the famous Athena poster picture of a girl with her skirt rucked-up and rubbing a tennis ball on her bottom three times in as many months. As often as not such pictures are provided with a headline that includes the word "cheeky".

Today's issue makes up for its bottom deficit with a double page spread featuring no less than 36 (thirty-six) pictures of celebrities and models wearing provocative underwear in styles ranging over the past fifty years. It is a cornucopia of lace and sheer black satin, basques and bras, plunging necklines and navels. The headline is "Thongs ain't what they used to be!"

I can hear my editor asking what this has to do with the war in Iraq. Everything, because the picture in the Daily Telegraph shows three totally naked ladies, a long one, a short one and a tall one, facing away from the camera and towards a phalanx of British bobbies wearing PC Dixon of Dock Green helmets and fluorescent riot jackets. The policemen are clearly discomforted and in every case staring fixedly at a point above the top of the ladies heads. This confrontation took place on Sunday outside the Permanent Joint Headquarters of the British Armed Forces at Northwood near London. Without the high heels and the assumption of the contrapose position the ladies are not showing their rears to the best advantage and would not, I am afraid, make it to the Daily Mail, even on a low B-day. In fact, as we know, they did not.

The picture is curiously reminiscent of three almost identically proportioned ladies in a picture by the famous French between-the-wars photographer Brassai. He captures them at the moment when they are displaying their charms to a just arrived customer of the Parisian brothel in which they work. There are differences, of course. Brassai's ladies are wearing highish heels, their hands are on their hips and the customer's eyeline is not elevated skyward. Nor, one supposes, would Brassai's ladies be capable of uttering anything so profound as "We are here to show solidarity with the troops. We don't want Iraqis to die, but we don't want the troops to either."