Didn't she win a Celebrity Mastermind over the holidays?

Just a thought like

vis a vis the fairer sex? I'm assuming it was all boys

Nothing in my post can in any way be said to be intimidatory to any ladies who wish to post. Indeed, I believe the great Hepworth himself once posted a far more overt appreciation of "beootifull ladeez" on this very forum. So take off your offended Top Hat and away for a sit down with matron.

(I am , of course, in jest, but no doubt you'll go off on one of your deeply felt homiliies to the decency of public schoolboys...)

Has it come to the point where a chap can't say he finds a 50-year-old woman attractive?

I find it supriusing that a self-confessed hip-hop fan would express offence at a bit of lewd innuendo.

When we had that big debate about Bitches Suck D*ck hitmaker Tyler The Creator, on which side did you fall?

If you drew the Venn diagram for 'women' and 'fans of The Mahavishnu Orchestra', you'd be lucky to even have an overlap with the band's wives and lovers.

What on earth was young Webb doing to warrant a PG?

Bongo albums is where it's at, daddio!

you are awful but I like you!!

*punches Spart on shoulder, and flounces off, stumbling*

Jake Thackray wrote The Lodger all about you :)

What a diamond. Get the tea on now love.

(I can't help thinking I'm letting the a intiative slip for the sake of a cheap laugh...)

Very gifted in the trouser department,

pissing myself laughing, snot & coffee all over my keyboard.

Thanks a bunch!

I'd watch grumble flicks all day if I didn't get my wifely wiggins.

...along the lines that her husband WASN'T looking at mucky films, but (*snip* - legal ed)

was on the front cover of last November's Q.

Mind you, he's let himself go a bit tonsorially speaking, hasn't he?

and made me switch off last night.

But that is another thread I believe.

strictly to yourself my good fellow.

conceptions of the types of people who read Word magazine

which might have been usefully deployed at various points far earlier in this thread.

I have never understood how some politicians have gone to prison for their expenses fraud while others haven't had so much as a questioning down the yard. eg Jacqui Smith - "sister's back bedroom = main residence" really has to be the weakest justification on them all.

That's a lot of grummer!

The OP, IMO, appeared to be a mildly laddish, 'Carry On' style appreciation of J Smith.
Many of the subsequent comments, apart from being 'more PC than thou', seem to me to be, frankly, patronising and Victorian in their implied assumption that the fairer sex need to be protected from such 'filth'. From my experience, women are a great deal tougher than some of our precious flowers would care to believe. They, also, have no inhibitions about indulging in sexual comment. For example, check out the reaction to Daniel Craig in his Speedos.
I would also imagine that the fragrant Jacqui would be rather flattered that her appearance drew admiring comment.

are we really suggesting that Carry On films,which can only now be viewed as quaint social documents illustrating the embarrassing past and the rapey qualities of British character actors of the period, actually illustrate a great truth about human relationships?

Any chance of a clip from Love Thy Neighbour? Race relations are something I've never understood.

she could have it. (If I have offended any goat lovers, tough shit, they love it, slags)

But here is a serious question that I ask because it is a bit of a mystery to me. Why do magazines/newspapers largely aimed at women go on and on about women's appearance and weight so much? It is not just the average Wordster's Bete Noir the Daily Mail that does this. Working at a University I know that Heat is read by intelligent young women and yet depressingly every cover I see is almost literally either "Is Christina turning into a bit of a fatty?" or "Cheryl, put some weight on love."

This reminds me of one of the most disturbing things I heard recently - a Radio 4 program in which a sociologist was explaining a study she had carried out on young peoples' attitude to boob jobs and cosmetic surgery generally. It turned out there was a group of young women who wanted breast augmentations that looked artificial so that it was clear they had had a boob job.

One theory I read recently was that fashion/celebrity culture is all driven by gay men and - since they aren't really interested in women - it's all their fault. I think that is very unfair. An alternative commonly aired idea is that it is women brainwashed by the patriarchy. Is that true, or is there more to it than that? I think there is. Any opinions?

sentiments largely Gauntlet except that I will never understand why women sometimes get upset at compliments. If I tell a lady she looks great I mean that she looks great nothing more nothing less. As much as you feel women are deified as sex objects I have to say that men are now facing the same situation these days. We had a fire at our warehouse last week and there were a number of my female colleagues who were drooling over the firemen. I don't mean the comment 'look at him he is fit'. I mean drooling. Unfortunately it is the society that we have spawned. The next generation will probably be even worse.
I am possibly in the minority in thinking that the OP was a poor attempt at humour rather than a derogatory or sexist attack. Unfortunately it is all too easy to misjudge a posting - I bet he wont make same mistake again. In the meantime I think we should bring him down from the gallows before the executioner arrives.

something a female friend from Uni told me often has popped into my head. It's a comment attributed to Janis Joplin:

Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.

Not sure it helps in any way but it's a sentiment I've lost and won with in life in roughly equal measure.

I must confess that gender politics to me is a minefield. It's as much about unlearning as it is about learning. My main concernthese days - as a father of two girls - is that increasingly it's women who need to unlearn as much as men do. We seem to have reached the stalemate of a lowest common denominator equivalency in many areas of society. I'm old fashioned in that I want to applaud the differences between men and women - physically, mentally and emotionally - but both sexes have been lured into a fantasy world of unrealistic choices about how our minds think and our bodies look. More often that not it leads to self-doubt and anger for both men and women when there is so much more we could be doing to enjoy each other's company.

My wife read your post and her comment was typically pithy:

"That's why I'll not bring a single women's lifestyle magazine into our home."

I've been trying to ignore this thread.

As other people have said before, there is a massive difference between passing judgment and paying a compliment.

If any of you (and, thankfully most of you don't seem to) think that 'she's been on the Slimfast' 'bloke can stop watching sexy porn stars and shag her now she's not a fattie' and 'now she's not a fattie her husband should be able to bring himself to keep her fulfilled (correct spelling)' falls under the description of "paying a compliment" then I suggest you quietly go and have a think about it.

One day perhaps it won't bother me. But we are still living in a world where Jacqui Smith had to deal with several articles about her cleavage (including in Guardian, Times & Telegraph. We're not talking 'tabloid scum' here) on her first day as Home Secretary. I'm fairly confident no male Home Secretary's chest has caused comment on his first day in office.

While we are still living in that world, it will continue to bother me and it will continue to be unfair and sexist.

http://www.buttercups.org.uk/

to the OP at all. On an average football site, for example, it would be tame,if rather odd. I've got in trouble myself on here having been commenting on a Scottish football site then popping over here with the same mind set.

On here sexist comment about women feels totally out of place and long may that be the case. It's an oasis of sanity and good manners on the web and we're lucky to have it. What this is really about is the demarcation of the norms of a public forum. I don't want to see them changed and most of the objectors on this thread feel the same way.

Anyone is free to comment on Jacqui Smiths body anywhere else they want to where that would be welcome. Just not here.

I thought my offence at the OP was evidence of a respect for both sexes and a desire to see them treated equally. I now see that I was wrong and I have just lived a sheltered life. Now the scales have fallen from my eyes, maybe I can get on with a bit more living.

PS I also like rap music.