Wardrobe Malfunctions

I believe that anyone can look attractive if they dress well and clothing is something I've learnt to use to my advantage. Corsetry, stilettos and seamed stockings, fascinators, red lipstick and jewellery help me pretend that I'm not just plump and plain, help me create an illusion, a glamour. I love glamour. Every time someone tells me that I make them feel underdressed, every time a stranger comments on my outfit, it makes my whole day. But while what you wear can turn you from a little bown bird into a peacock, it can also just make you look a bit of a cock. I'm talking about Judy Finnegan's hammock-like bra making a bid for freedom at an awards ceremony, or Janet Jackson's bizarrely spiky nipple fighting its way out on stage. The wardrobe malfunction is one of the cruellest forms of humiliation and as I'm in a confessional mood, here are my top five most embarrassing instances.

Number Five: Picture the scene, I'm at the Leipzig goth festival, I'm with my boyfriend of the time and his band are playing the festival so I have a special access all areas wristband, I'm at the main venue and it's heaving with goths but with my magic wristband I can jump queues, I'm eyeing up other people's outfits and feeling pretty pleased with myself, I'm standing swigging mead with people from bands and feeling pretty damned cool. But what's this? Are these German goths staring in wonder at my amazing dress sense or has the zip on my skirt broken exposing my bum crack to anyone who cares to look? Yeah.

I've written before about the Hancock incident at the cinema that, along with the surfeit of bodily fluids, pushed me to resignation. What I didn't mention was wardrobe malfunction Number Four. So, I arrived at work having had to clean up shit the previous day to be presented with a costume to wear. That was quite bad. The costume consisted of a woolly hat and sunglasses in the middle of summer to be worn whilst standing in front of a hot dog grill. That was fairly awful. I hadn't put my contacts in so I was forced to wear the sunglasses perched above my normal glasses, looking like a mental who couldn't dress themselves properly. That was pretty appauling. Just before going down to my till I bent down to get my name badge and the seam on the inner thigh of my trousers split right up to the gusset meaning I had to spend the entire shift shuffling around concessions like a demented penguin with my legs together so as not to flash anyone. That was the icing on the cake of humiliation.

I try my very hardest to present an elegant exterior even if, as many people have told me, it only lasts until I open my mouth. Unfortunately events often conspire to rid me of any such illusions before I've even managed to do that, such as in incident Number Three. I realise that the tinned foods isle in Asda isn't the classiest of locations but you never know who you'll bump into at the supermarket and I was wearing a new pair of holdups. Has ever such a misnomer been applied to an item of hosiery? I was walking down frozen foods when I felt the right "holdup" come loose. I prayed it would stay put but by the time I'd reached baked goods the rubber top was flapping around my ankle like a bell around a clapper. Class, poise and elegance is not having to dive into the George changing room to peel off an errant stocking, then being forced to walk home in the rain one stocking on, one stocking off.

Class, poise and elegance were exactly what I wanted to present to the gentleman I went on a date with, who was instead confronted with clothing disaster Number Two. I met him for a drink and quite wanted to impress him. Unfortunate then that within the hour I'd gone arse over tit with a full pint in each hand. However, like the trooper I am, I picked myself up, resigned myself to smelling like a brewery and continued in my attempt to charm him. As I got up to go out for a cigarette I noticed him eyeing me up. I raised an eyebrow quizzically, "Just enjoying the view," he smirked. I felt pleased that he fancied me depite my enormous clumsiness and general ineptitude. It was only when I got home, via several modes of public transport, that I realised that when I fell over I'd split my pencil skirt right up the vent, exposing stocking tops, suspenders and far too much thigh to half of London.

Here we are at my Number One most embarrassing wardrobe malfunction. It has crossed my mind that most people probably haven't even had five, never mind enough to make a chart from but that's part of the exciting life I lead, I suppose. Anyway, when I was in my second year at Cambridge I was a member of a society whose entire purpose was to dress up as goths and get drunk. As you can imagine that was quite a stretch for me. On this occasion we were attending the formal dinner at Kings College. I was wearing a new corset and was somewhat over-excited and showing off, therefore managed to drink all of my wine but somehow not to eat anything. We'd hired out the Kings Cellar after the meal for playing of cheesy music and dancing. Among said cheesy music was the Timewarp from Rocky Horror. I think it might have been played twice. Both times I was there enthusiastically stepping to the right etc. to much encouragement. So much encouragement that I did it again in the bar once the cellar was shut. And possibly again another time after that. I may even have got home and done a bit of timewarping in the mirror. Where I discovered that when my arms were raised above my head they pulled my breasts out of the corset, making my nipples visible to everyone. Suddenly most of the applause made sense.

So, come on, what's your most embarrassing wardrobe malfunction?

Why I Don't Do Exercise Or "Look at the state of that!"

I don't like the summer much. The sun serves only to make me pink through sun burn or eczema and, being the self-absorbed person that I am, the sight of pretty young things gallavanting about in next to nothing leaves me beset with a pathetic self-loathing. The other day at work a tanned and long-legged, scantily clad goddess walked into the foyer, causing an awed silence to fall across every male present. I bitterly muttered something to Female Colleague about forgetting to put any clothes on that morning, or something equally hackneyed, whilst inside wishing desperately that I had slim, toned thighs of polished mahogany rather than hideous limbs with the appearance of a poorly-set blancmange. It's at times like these that I start to have dangerous thoughts. Thoughts about exercise. Thoughts that need quashing immediately. I don't do exercise and it's for very good reasons.

GPs have often suggested to me that a bit of "gentle exercise" will help with depression. I've always dismissed it as a completely ludicrous idea. To me, there's no such thing as "gentle exercise". Being fat and rubbish at sport taught me that physical exercise is nothing but brutal torment. Games at school was ritual humiliation for me and as soon as I had the werewithall I bunked off, hiding smoking in the junior school changing rooms, like every other sensible person.

However, I did entertain the idea while at university that perhaps not all physical exercise had to be quite as traumatic as what I'd experienced at school. Surely in the Real World there weren't games teachers who hit you on the arse with a hockey stick if you didn't run fast enough or people who howled, "fucking fat idiot" when you failed to do something as trivial as catching a rounders ball?

I went through a phase in my second year where I was very fond of having the sort of fun that makes you dance a lot and eat nothing. I stopped this due to the realisation that it may not actually be all that good for my, precarious at best, mental state. Having laid off the appetite suppressants, I realised I was putting weight on and decided to do something about it. I considered my options and immediately ruled out jogging. If I was going to embarrass myself I was at least going to do it somewhere where everyone else was in the same boat as me. I still have no idea why people would choose to huff and puff around in hideous sports wear in broad daylight where it's perfectly possible that you'll bump into an ex or an enemy looking perfectly dressed and cool as a cucumber. You may as well park an exercise bike in the middle of the supermarket as far as I'm concerned.

So, having never been into public humiliation, jogging was out. I didn't even give a minute's thought to the gym, convinced that if there were the types in the Real World to hit bums with hockey sticks and yell insults, it was there that they would lurk. That left me with one viable option: swimming. So I rallied some friends to come with me for my first foray into the world of exercise since school. I was even looking forward to it a bit. There wouldn't be teachers, I wouldn't have to do anything I didn't want to. Surely it couldn't be that bad?

When optimistically planning my swimming trip there were several factors that I failed to take into account. The first of which conspired to humiliate me before I'd even left the changing rooms. Without the aid of glasses or contact lenses I'm really quite blind and unfortunately swimming pretty much precludes both. So, having wrestled my way into my swimming costume, I groped my way towards the lockers where I saw a girl whom I took to be my friend. It was only after I'd rushed up to her, grabbed her arm and asked, "Can we go in together?" that I realised she was in fact a complete stranger. A stranger who now thinks I'm some form of sex pest who's escaped her carer. Embarrassment number one.

The second factor was that the fitness pool is at the opposite side of the building from the changing rooms, and to get to it involves walking past the baby pool and the leisure pool. This in itself isn't that bad, I'm not quite self-absorbed enough to believe that everyone in the entire leisure centre will simultaneously stop what they're doing and stare at me, like in that horrible Boots suncream ad. And even if they did, if you go out looking like me you know that a swimming costume is hardly the worst thing you could be wearing for a walk of shame. Try having to ask a cab driver where you are at seven in the morning while wearing a corset, ripped stockings, one false eyelash and carrying a pair of six inch heels in your hand. No, it was only when combined with factor number three that this became a problem.

The third thing I'd failed to take into consideration was that it would be horribly busy on a Sunday morning. The so-called leisure pool was teeming with the type of adolescents usually found skulking around shopping centres in baseball caps. They'd managed to turn the entire pool into a warzone and were engaged in divebombing and spitting pool water at each other. By now I'd found my friends and was walking arm in arm with a girl who was well endowed, to put it mildly. Unfortunately this got the attention of the ASBO kids and they stopped fighting, coming together in a momentary truce to shout, "Look at the tits on that!" Friend and I sped up, ignoring them, hoping that was it but before the echo of the last comment had finished bouncing off the water, came another shout, "But look at the state of her friend!" Keeping my eyes fixed firmly forward I carried on to the fitness pool with the jeer ringing in my ears. Embarrassment number two.

By the time I got into the water, I didn't care that my friends hadn't really meant it when they'd said they were really unfit and had gone straight into the middle lane, leaving me in the remedial lane. After the previous incidents, I was swimming with a grim determination and was almost considering moving up a lane and attempting to swim faster through sheer bloody-mindedness when I was barged into by a man over taking me. He managed to kick me in the side, causing my head to go under and me to flounder about spluttering in an utterly undignified manner. When I got to the side he apologised to me and I realised that, third and final embarrassment, he only had one arm. I had been over taken by someone with one arm.

It was then that I decided that nothing really changes and I vowed never to do any form of sport or training ever again, blancmange thighs be damned.