(SF)

It's that time again, when self-conscious men go shopping for underwear for their loved ones. Of course, they usually buy the wrong style, often in the wrong size. Reluctant shopper Neil Tweedie gets some sound advice
# Boys' guide to buying perfect lingerie

There are only three reasons why a man should be in a lingerie department: he's lost, he's the store manager, or he's a blackmail case in waiting, taking the morning off from the Foreign Office. Other than that, there's really no justification for entangling oneself in that strange other world of female underwear.

Buy the wife a Black & Decker Workmate by all means. It's a sensible gift from which she will derive years of pleasure while hopefully adding substantially to the value of the house. And, crucially, it's an item comprehensible to the male mind. But bras and knickers? You're just asking for trouble.

The thing is that men can only ever get it wrong.

Choose one of those catapult things, a thong or whatever it's called, and you will in all probability be told a) you have no taste, b) you're just a shaven-ape sleazeball with a typical one-dimensional male mind, or asked c) how you would feel having to wear a cheese slicer under your trousers for the entirety of a drinks party?

But if you play safe and buy a more generous knicker, opting for the bigger of two sizes to ensure a comfortable fit, it will be: "So I'm fat, then! You think I'm fat, don't you? You could hold a bloody wedding reception in those!"

So, gentlemen, don't do it. Even now, at Christmas, when concern about finding a suitable gift is turning to desperation, combined with an aching desire to get the whole awful business of present-buying out of the way. Take a trip down to the hardware shop and choose a nice ironing board instead.

But if you have to - if you really, really have to - go knicker-hunting, then at least join one of the two one-day Christmas Lingerie Academies at John Lewis in London's Oxford Street.

There the frazzled husband or boyfriend will be offered sensible female advice on how to make an appropriate festive purchase while surrounded by reassuringly laddish paraphernalia: a comfy sofa, a fridge full of beer and, for the really mature, plasma screens on which to play a selection of computer games.

Trainees can even bring their loved ones along if they want to, but that's not really the point.

Mistress of the academy is Maria Walker, the store's head of lingerie. Maria is 38, a mother of three and has spent 14 years down among the undies. What she doesn't know about them can be written on one half of one cup of a 30 AAA, whatever that is.

"A lot of men worry that they are going to be thought of as a bit pervy by coming into a lingerie department," she says.

"Or that they are going to be leapt upon by some hyper shop assistant who will embarrass them to death with intimate questions about their partner's likes and dislikes. Have you been in one before?"

Nope. Well, maybe when I was six, in Marks & Spencer with my mum. But lingerie departments weren't lingerie departments then, in the late Sixties. They were more like the quartermaster's stores at Catterick.

Everything was white or navy and passion-killingly functional; and there were huge white Playtex girdles capable of stopping a 45 calibre slug at 50 yards. Or so it seemed to my schoolboy eyes.

No, lingerie departments were, like the dentist, things to be avoided. Maria understands.

"Bra size is the key to getting it right. It happens all the time: the man comes in and you ask for his partner's size and he looks dumbfounded and starts trying to represent it with his hands, saying 'It's about a handful' or something like that. All he has to do is have a quick look in the drawer.

"There was one man in quite recently who gave up describing his girlfriend and simply showed me a picture of her topless that he kept on his mobile telephone.

It helped."

And the bottom half?

"It's a straightforward matter of observation to find out whether your partner likes thongs or bikini bottoms or shorts. The one absolute rule is: if in doubt about size, go for the smaller one.

It's better to do that and be a little bit wrong than to present her with a pair that's too big. There's nothing more upsetting than receiving knickers that hang off you.

It's basically saying 'I think you're big'. It's not going to go down well. If they really are too small, she can always bring them back."

In fact, Maria says that about one in five lingerie gifts sold in her department to men is returned by their partners in the New Year.

"It's often the wrong size, but also the wrong choice. A lot of men go for what they want, which mostly seems to be all black or all red and as little of it as possible. Sometimes you get young men coming in in pairs and one is buying.

He starts acting up for the benefit of the other, making out it's a big joke. He's just trying to make himself look like a lad and not thinking of what his partner would actually like."

Each person in Britain will spend an average of £700 celebrating Christmas this year, and a fair amount will go on underwear. John Lewis's past experience shows that in the six weeks before Christmas the weekly spend on lingerie and women's nightwear increases by more than 70 per cent.

Most of the increase is due to spending by men - the number of male customers rises by two thirds in the same period.

And the British male is nothing if not predictable. The store's returns show that most men buy red and black lingerie in silk, often with, you guessed it, suspenders.

Any other trends?

"Padded bras are becoming more popular," says Maria. "Not so much to give the appearance of size, but to shape. Shapewear in general is on the rise, to mould the figure and produce a smoother line.

"In terms of bottoms, shorts have taken over from thongs. When you actually ask men what they like, a lot say they prefer briefs to thongs."

But does it matter in the end? After all, underwear spends most of its time being just that.

"If you feel good on the inside, you feel good on the outside," admonishes Maria. "What is the point of wearing a dress costing hundreds and hundreds of pounds if the line is spoilt by cheap, poorly fitting lingerie?"

And with that we dive into a dazzling jungle of glitter and gauze, of Freya and Gossard and Elle Macpherson's Intimates. All very pretty, but Mrs T would, I am sure, much prefer a new kettle.

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Excellent observations & advice!

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