Why I’ve suddenly got that sinking feeling

May 16 2008 by Denis Kilcommons, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

ONLY in America. Psychologist Karin Hart didn’t sit on her bum when she noticed her bottom was sagging.

She designed a support that allegedly restores perkiness to a posterior in need of a lift.

It’s called the Biniki and, being America, she patented the idea and is now selling it at £15 a time.

Karin also refers to it as a Butt Bra and, purely for the purposes of research, I visited her website and it looks a bit like a chap’s jock strap from the rear.

Mind you, the lady models do look a tad more attractive than the blokes I used to share a dressing when I played football.

“The idea came to me at a moment of personal need,” she says. “One look in the mirror after some rapid weight loss showed me the unhappy truth, my bottom was sagging.”

So she set about designing a wearable alternative to a surgical bottom lift.

A surgical bottom lift? I never knew such a thing existed. Can you get a surgical front lift, as well? Or an all-over lift that would raise me from my modest five feet six to six foot?

Better not. I would be well out of alignment and at my age that could be dangerous. Not to mention that none of my trousers would fit.

And, living in the land of equality and opportunity, Karin has also designed one for men, as well.

Which is all well and good. But presumably the idea of this garment is to make your body more attractive to the opposite sex.

What happens if this works, you meet the partner of your dreams and, in the course of true love and affection, doff your togs in a moment of passion and …flobadobalob.

“What was that?”

“Ah. I was meaning to tell you. That was my bottom slapping the back of my knees.”

Turfed out for being on new ground

I KNOW I shouldn’t but I had to smile when I read that an entire sixth year of a school in Scotland was sent home on their last day - because pupils turfed over their common room floor.

All right, they did wrong. All right, this could be viewed as vandalism or anti social behaviour.

But come on. What a brilliant notion.

They didn’t gang up for a happy slappy attack on another youngster.

They didn’t mug an old age pensioner.

They created a surface for indoor cricket or a game of tennis or a picnic. And that’s not to mention the practical experience of a laying a lawn.

However, all 100 students were sent home in disgrace.

We never got sent home from school when we did something diabolical.

Like the day in the fifth form when a teacher missed the period he should have spent with us and we were left to our own devices for 40 minutes.

Get out your books and revise?

No chance.

Somebody decided to stack all the desks in the corner. There they were, three desks high, a pyramid of academic achievement. These days, we could have won the Turner Prize.

Why did we do it?

It seemed like a good idea at the time and you should have seen the face of the master who turned up for the next period.

Mind you, we all got detention, which we fully expected. Thirty lads on wire wool duty cleaning the corridor outside the headmaster’s office.

Ah yes, the days of crime and punishment. When teachers had the power to inflict discipline and if you told your mum and dad you’d been caned, you got another clip round the ear.

Ready for hell’s kitchen

WE are heading into recession at a rate of knots and what is money being spent on?

Funding British scientists to find out if a robot can safely stir soup.

Yes, a £1m grant from the European Commission has gone to the Cooperative Human Robot Interaction Systems (CHRIS) project.

A lab spokeswoman said: “It will specifically look at the problems of a human and a robot working together in the same space, for example in a kitchen where the service robot is performing a task such as stirring soup, while you add cream.”

A better use of resources would be to devise tops that can be pulled from cans of soup without splashing it down your front.

Or pop bottles that you can actually open with a twist without having to cut plastic seals with a knife.

And robots in kitchens?

That’s about as likely as Gordon Ramsey stopping swearing.