Yes, size does matter

Smartening the ladies up

I remember one Sunday morning as I started channel hopping I happened to pause on the business channel which had offered air-time to the business of God.

The preacher at that point was skirting (an atrocious pun, pardon me) an interesting point of the difference between spinsters (an ancient word) and those ladies who had hitched their prince and then allowed the comfort zone of marriage and motherhood to replace the adjective sexy with frumpy.

He exhorted them to make a beeline to Victoria's Secret, where glamorous lingerie might just be the kindling to a relationship that was getting less interesting than ordinary.

Practical tips for change

Such practical living exhortations would do a few people a lot of good though I would not have known what to do when I approached an extended queue at a Marks and Spencer till a few years ago. The supervisor asked a free cashier to open another till where I found myself asking if I could have one with under-wire.

Well, the cashier had a name tag and title, the title read Bra Advisor; I could think of a few people I had seen who could have found her advice very useful, from the need for augmentation to the one of keeping them hidden.

Selling the unmentionable

Descending further into the satisfaction of self, a lady had a business plan many years ago, but was fobbed off with the statement that women are not interested in sex; I would not know, but the sales of vibrators had grown to 3 million a year in 2006.

When she tried to open a store in the very Catholic Dublin she got a bullet in the post, but that store is one of the top three performing stores in her business empire.

No, she was not at some seedy location, she was addressing the Institute of Directors yesterday as the head of the Ann Summers chain - Jacqueline Gold.

Finally, she had the answers to the three questions men always ask but never voice out - in her words - "Yes, I do wear our underwear. No, I do not test every product and yes, size does matter." I must have lived a sheltered life; I would not know for the life of me what the questions were and what she is talking about.

Ann Summers was my nanny.