Pant Music

www.paulcoia.com

A peek around my underwear drawer would be a strange and wonderful trip indeed for those who are in to looking at ruins and ancient memorabilia. It’s perhaps not up there with a weekend in Rome exploring the Coliseum or a trip to Greece and a wander round the Parthenon but, as I tend to keep my favourites from years ago, my boxer shorts drawer would still allow for happy photographs and memories of historical exploring.

I keep all sorts of things in my underwear drawer because it seems a safe place so you will find receipts, chocolate bars, pens and the odd bit of change as well as the garments themselves which will be the most interesting to historians of the future.

Even though I no longer wear them, the under crackers of my past still sit with my current, day to day, favourites as if, one day soon, the Victoria and Albert costume curator will call and ask me to exhibit. I know deep down that won’t happen so I have to admit that I have no idea why I hang on to these threadbare old rags so long, other than that there’s some half formed relationship and bond with them that the ones I now use as car cloths didn’t have.

I know some people have what they call “lucky pants”, those that remind them of great moments in life when they wore them for a great job interview or when asking successfully for a pay rise, or on that day they finally got that supermodel in to the back row of the movies. I had to settle for the Glasgow Odeon and a girl whose dad had a great chip shop in Springburn. Smelling her hair was always a treat as I got a kiss and a feeling of having had a great fry up all in one. A great double dipper.

But, the reason I’m getting a bit worried about my underwear drawer now is the announcement last week that Marks and Spencers were targeting ladies with bigger chests who must pay more for their bras than those who are less well endowed. Granted, M&S backed down saying they’d made a mistake and those with double G sized inflation busters will pay the same as those with the credit crunch economy sized ones but I bet the High Street retailer still gets its money back somehow.

And that’s why I’m worried. What if they decide to make guys who need bigger underpants than others pay more?

Before you think this is my way of boasting, what I’m really anxious about is that I will get caught in a store changing the price tags on the packages when I next buy. Just think it through. If a price hike on pants for larger guys goes ahead then we men will be peeling off the more expensive labels from the ghetto blaster sized shorts and putting them on our little iPod sized purchases so that they get admiring glances, rather than sympathy, at the till. I’d definitely be tempted in to that.

Of course this worry I have is a bit premature as, having renewed my underwear three years ago I’m not due to renew them for another ten or twelve years, but the thought still bothers me.

And, in truth, I’m glad I don’t have to replace my relics just yet as I admit I have no idea what is currently fashionable in the downstairs department. Is it a la mode just now to wear boxers, briefs, Y fronts or go commando? The normal way I have of judging these things is much cheaper than buying fashion magazines and is quicker than sitting through Gok Wan’s fashion fixes on telly. I simply look around the changing room at the gym but, as I haven’t been for a while, my fashion compass is hopelessly spinning in all directions.

Perhaps I should just watch Britain’s Got Talent which seems to consist of one guy after another stripping off and showing his brand new pants while eating fire or juggling. I couldn’t watch the sword swallower without wondering if he has a lot of underpants with holes in them.

Not only is men’s underwear big on talent shows just now, even Nicholas Bendtner the Arsenal footballer is so keen to inherit Beckham’s “soccer player is pants” modelling gig that he decided to show off his assets this week when he fell out of a nightclub with his trousers at his ankles after his team had been beaten by Manchester United.

Perhaps it was Nicholas’ clever way of telling us was upset and felt that he was to blame for the defeat as he had poor ball control. Still, like all good teams and footballers, he would be grateful for his supporters which seemed from the photographs to be called Emporio and Armani! Being a less than prolific goal scorer I’m sure he’s not worried about being a world class dribbler.

Now Ledley King who plays for Tottenham has been arrested with his trousers down and went defiantly to the cell shouting how rich he was and that his undies cost more than the arresting officer’s house. He then bravely marched in to isolation, heard the door bang, cried his eyes out and wet himself. Class!

So, this week my thoughts are all about underwear. And then I saw Victoria Beckham posing in hers for a newspaper shoot.

I never want to see underwear ever again.