Hilarie: Make a date with Giants

Jan 2 2010 By Hilarie Stelfox

SOMEONE has kindly sent me a copy of The Huddersfield Giants 2010 charity calendar, wittily entitled Scrum-ptious. It took me a while to get the play on words – I’m rubbish at writing headlines.

It is one of those Calendar Girls-style calendars in which our lads are displayed naked save for a couple of props – champagne bottles, motorbike etc.

I’m sure those ladies from the Women’s Institute never realised what they were starting when they agreed to pose behind kettles and cake stands. But they have spawned many copycat publications and helped hundreds of charities as well as their own to raise funds.

The Giants calendar, photographed by Mark Hemingway, is supporting the Huddersfield-based Laura Crane Trust which funds medical research into cancer suffered by young people.

I suspect it takes a certain courage to strip off with no more than a paper G-string for modesty and bare all for the close scrutiny of the calendar-buying public.

But be assured that the Giants all look as if they have been professionally groomed, primped and preened. Every waxing salon in the town must have been working overtime in the run-up to the photoshoot along with several tattoo parlours. Our lads are as oiled and hairless as any Hollywood movie star and covered in body art.

It’s all a far cry from pin-ups such as Sean Connery in his 007 heydays, when his chest sported a veritable sheepskin rug.