His mouth said one thing ...



MPs get to question the prime minister every week but it's not often that they get to speak to someone really important like Alistair Campbell. So imagine the excitement among members of the Foreign Affairs committee yesterday afternoon when they got to spend more than two hours putting the spin doctor on the spot over his dodgy dossiers on Iraq.

Westminster wisdom yesterday had it that the No 10 spin doctor had passed the test, picking up a big handful of sand and throwing it in the committee's faces, leaving them blinking, blinded and none the wiser as to the dodginess or otherwise of the documents said to have taken Britain to war. But body language expert Robert Phipps was not so easily taken in. For a start he spotted straight away that Campbell placed his documents on the left of the desk in front of him. "That let him look down when things got difficult," he says. "It's a deliberate ploy to avoid eye-contact".

There were other tricks, too. "He nodded and shook his head at the same time," he says. That confused the committee - did he agree or disagree with them?" The poor MPs had no idea.

But it was Campbell's arms that really gave him away. At 3.44pm the spin doctor fell into "a classic arm cross" - a sign, apparently, of self-protection. "He was self-hugging," says Phipps. "Hands under, thumbs out." Then he shifted in his seat, "raised arm barriers and interlinked fingers followed by a straight lock with thumbs jiggling around". Not a good sign, apparently.

But at 3.46pm, Campbell bounced back, hands waving at a mention of the joint intelligence committee. "He was finger-point aggressive," says Phipps.

In short, he says, "it was by no means a neat performance: strong, yes, but uncomfortable at various moments. And no humour."

Julian Glover

Body beautiful



A short and curly history of the merkin



Comedy terrorist Aaron Barschak has another claim to fame - he's put the merkin back in the spotlight.

Before his royal gatecrash, the prankster amused crowds and cameramen outside Windsor Castle by lifting his pink ball gown to reveal a luxuriant, black pubic wig - making him the latest in a long history of merkin-wearers.

The Oxford Companion To The Body traces the merkin back to 1450, a time when the bidet was a distant prospect and personal hygiene fell well short of the mark. Pubic lice were common - so some women, fed up with the constant itching, just shaved the lot off and then covered their modesty with a merkin.

Prostitutes, too, were frequent wearers. In the days before penicillin, it didn't take long to become infected with sexually transmitted diseases. They knew it was no work, no pay, and didn't want to scare the customers off with their syphilitic pustules and gonorrhoeal warts. So the merkin was used as a prosthesis to cover up a litany of horrors.

The Oxford Companion recounts an amusing tale of one gentleman who procured the disease-riddled merkin of a prostitute, dried it, gave it a good comb and then presented it to a cardinal, telling him he had brought him St Peter's beard. Some prostitutes even used them to give their nether regions a bit of razzle-dazzle. So a natural brunette could offer differing collars and cuffs to demanding customers.

These days, merkins are largely the preserve of sexual fetishists - although the Oxford Companion notes that this piece of "female finery" is also an "essential piece of the serious drag queen's wardrobe". They can be made from nylon, human hair or even yak's belly, depending on what the erotic dabbler enjoys feeling against her skin. And they're either woven on to a mesh and stuck on with spirit gum, or attached to a transparent G-string.

"I know a bit about merkins, but I don't know anyone who wears one and won't be designing one myself," says Red or Dead founder Wayne Hemingway. "I can't see them making a comeback, but it is a bloody good word."

Would-be wearers will struggle to find any merkin retailers. "We're not 100% sure our customers would buy into the merkin," says Ann Summers spokesman Philip Tooney. "The trend at the moment is less is more - with the 'full Brazilian' and the 'landing strip' proving popular."

But fanny fashion can be fickle. And if there is a return to the dense undergrowths often seen in 70s porn flicks, then the waxed, electrolysed women of today may be reaching for a merkin until nature restores their full glory.

Gareth Francis

Stargazing



The measure of fame



Forget "Who d'you know?" The key measure of social status today is "Who knows you?" Once you can answer that, you can rank celebs just like earthquakes or storms - from one up to a perfect 10. Two questions: How much of a celeb are you? And - has Britain ever produced a level-10 celeb?

Measuring fame is easy: just think along the lines of job adverts. An ad for an "attractive six-figure salary" job is saying you would be paid £100,000 or more, but not £1,000,000 - because then they would have advertised an "attractive seven-figure salary". To measure fame, just use the same approach for people. A six-figure celeb is one that can be recognised by at least 100,000 people, but not by a million. A 10-figure celeb can be recognised by at least a billion (1,000,000,000) people. You can't get higher than 10 because there aren't enough people on Earth yet.

How much of a celeb am I? I'm very sure that at least 100 people can recognise me - could put my name to my picture. But I don't think 1,000 people could do that. So that makes me a rather pathetic three-figure celeb. Mind you, a few years ago, when I worked for a big company and got out more, I'm sure that at least 1,000 people would have recognised me. So I used to be a four-figure celeb: but as memories have faded so my status has tumbled.

Let's go back to the second question: have any Brits ever reached level 10? Remember, to be a level-10 celeb you must be recognised by at least one billion people. I think the answer is yes, but only one. Not Margaret Thatcher, not the Beatles, not David Beckham, not even Princess Di or Churchill. All of these are (or were) nine-figure celebs - recognised in their day by a hundred million or more, but not by a billion.

No, in my view the only Brit ever to have made it to 10 was Charlie Chaplin. And that was before global TV, when it was much harder to become a high-rank celeb. Other level 10s - recognised in their day by at least a billion people - must surely include Rudolph Valentino, probably JFK, and almost certainly Mao Zedong. And today? It's hard to think of any westerner that makes it to this highest level of celeb-hood. Today, the world's only mega-celebs at level 10 are probably soap stars on Chinese TV.

It's a sad fact that the quickest way to boost your rating is to do something dreadful. James Bulger's killers, Thompson and Venables, rocketed overnight from level two (a typical child's score - recognised by at least 10 but not by 100 people) to level eight (recognised by 10 million but not by 100 million). Obviously, fame is not always admirable.

Richard Barry

Outdoor pursuits



Grin and bare it



Steve Gough, a 44-year-old father of three, former trucker, occasional rambler and frequent nudist, has had one hell of a week: he's been arrested three times - and ordered to appear in court twice. (He was rearrested the first time when he arrived naked for his hearing; whether he will be more formally dressed for his second appearance today is yet to be ascertained.)

He has also been beaten up and has made somewhat fractured progress in his "naked walk" from Land's End to John O'Groats. So you can't blame him for at times forgetting to turn his mobile on (he may not have any clothes but he does have a mobile - even naturists embrace modern developments) to receive supportive text messages from his international fanbase.

Since embracing a life of "public expression" (his term), Gough has become used to frequent setbacks. Aside from collecting a tower of indecent exposure charges, his planned interview last February on the John Peel show was a barefaced disaster when, on arriving dressed only in a name badge, he was refused entry into the BBC building. He has also had to cut down on cycling, because of the pain to exposed extremities - the pedals hurt his feet.

But the walk was always going to be a toughie, and a week after starting out Gough still hasn't left Cornwall. (He has allowed himself some rest, though, taking a break to "top up my suntan" at a naturist resort, the happily named Studland beach in Dorset.)

Even so, Gough's walk has caused difficulties on an international level, having sparked an impassioned debate on the internet, in which the likes of God and Charles Saatchi are cited in arguments about whether Gough is a "peaceful and deep man" or "a fucking nutcase". As for Gough, he has a simple response: "I'm like anyone," he writes on his website. "I want to be loved."

Hadley Freeman