A question if I may. Hands up (in the context of the question perhaps I should say BOTH hands up) if this picture seems excessively titillating to you...

Feel free to click it and something bigger should pop up... as it were.

kb1

This is a shot they're using at the moment for the stageplay of Calendar Girls in the West End. For anyone not in the know it's about the first Women's Institute group to bare all for a nude calendar as a fund raiser.

So, anyone feeling a paroxysm of lust?

Anybody had to stop reading for a quick application of a groinal ice pack?

Have all my readership had to nip off to "fix something" in a more private location?

Nope, me neither.

I think I can admit Miss Brook is an averagely attractive woman and there was a touch of cleavage on show there. But in this world of freely available porn, red-top newspapers with a higher nipple-per-square-foot ratio than a beach in the south of France and late night Channel 5 programming isn't this picture a tad... tame?

I've looked at the image and as it stands my nether regions have a tumescence quotient of zero. I'm not suddenly feeling flushed or excited. I don't feel the need to save said image on my computer for later perusal.

It's an advertising shot for a play about the WI getting their kit off, the general comedy stance of the image means it's less sexual than a lot of the underwear or perfume ads around these days, how many Calvin Klein ads have men in their pants showing off their freakishly bare chests for all to see?

But Transport for London has decided that it's an inappropriate image for Tube advertising and has forced them to make the Brookal buns larger.

kb2

Now you and I will take a look at that picture and basically say "all they've done is stretch the buns out to the exact shape of her breasts, and with the cherry nipples it's just as bad as it was."

Well, some of us are saying "TfL are a company that specialises in driving cylindrical objects into mildly damp tunnels until they drop a load on a nearby area" but most of us are saying the first thing.

I find it hard to tell the difference between the two shots, they've simply made it more about the suggestion of breasts than the breasts themselves... which to my definition makes it more titillating (if it does it for you) rather than less. That is the point of titillation to my mind after all, the suggestion as opposed to the actual baring.

What seems even stranger is that customers are free to read their red-tops on tube trains, pushing their multitude of nipples into the faces of anyone near them.

They're also free to wear almost anything, I have in the past seen women on the Tube wearing things that show off a lot more even than the first picture.

The thing with all of these items however is for them to be sexual you have to go LOOKING for it.

I would suggest it's a major minority of tube travellers who would see the first picture and feel the need for a quick fiddle (especially as if you're THAT person then there's better to be had with some good old fashioned frotting).

If you're going to panic about this stuff it's going to have to be one thing or another, not simply suggesting that the second image is fine for us to see because there's a touch more bun covering the boob.

Or just be fecking logical and realise you're not going to end up with Tube travellers openly fondling themselves over a comedy shot of Kelly Brook advertising a ruddy West End show.