Slice of magazine

When Miaow Cow goes off to bed early some nights, I make sure she's asleep and then steal a furtive look at her magazines. This gives me a minor thrill I must admit, all this doing something that technically I shouldn't be doing, what with me having a willy etc. Not that Miaow Cow would mind anyway, it's not as if I'm putting her mascara on my nipple hair and trying on her knickers and high heels, is it? Nope. I did that with my last girlfriend and gave it up after trying on her tights and losing blood supply to my lower legs for a few hours.

Anyway, it does a man no harm to check in on women's magazines once in a while. They're a useful insight into the soul of woman, a finger on the pulse of her myriad hopes and dreams, a beam of light on the impenetrable darkness of female mystique. And sometimes, hur hur, you get to see some boobs.

However, you will also have to wade through about forty pages of lumpen thighs and wrinkly bottoms as various celebs are photographed out in the wild - shopping or walking the dog to you or me - with a big yellow arrow and a blown up section highlighting the offending area. Revealed - Mel B has cellulite. Colleen McLoughlin has cellulite. Rod Stewart's daughter has sooooo been working on her abs, but...look below and yep, there it is, she has the cellulite too. Britney Spears is cellulite. This goes on for about ten pages. Just pages and pages of women's arses and stretchmarks and cellulite. What's the obsession, is it a feel-better-about-yourself-because-that-rich-bitch-has-cellulite-too sort of thing? I just can't relate. Well not really. I only ever knew one person with cellulite, and that was a bloke. He was tubby lad called Hutch who roomed with me at the Gaeltacht years ago and every morning the back of his legs always looked like he'd slept on a colander. He was exceptionally fat and flabby though, he sat down too quickly one day and injured himself sitting on his own balls. Try complaining about that one in Irish.

Reality TV is also a staple in every woman's life so the mags absolutely go to town on this. Dirty Dancing, Come Dancing, I'm a Celebrity, America's next top model, Pop Idol, Wife Swap, Brat camp, Hell's Kitchen, Celebrity Midget Tossing on Ice, they're all in there, getting the full coverage, all-out treatment.

Then there's the regular section for sexual gymnasts, and this month's grappling contortion is called the 'Erotic Accordion'. Yes. The Erotic Accordion. There's two words you never thought you'd see in the same sentence. Now I'll never again be able go to a Fleadh Ceol without wondering about the sensual acrobatics they get up to back stage. Such as violating a squeeze box and singing Boolavogue at full pelt as the instrument inhales and exhales its wails in tandem with their excitement. The Erotic Accordion? Sounds like the name of Richie Kavanagh's new album or something.

The last time I'd looked in one of these was about 20 years ago. It was my Mum's Woman's Weekly and back then it was all knitting patterns and short romance stories about handsome doctors proposing on horseback while picnicking near a lake. There was nothing sexual about an accordion and cellulite was something you sprayed on flower beds, or at the very least, kept well covered with industrial-strength underwear or if unavailable, body hair.

I worry about the world. I'll stick to loaded and FHM from here on, clearly superior reads.