Agent Provocateur

Miss Spent-Youth

Rowan Pelling, author of acclaimed articles such as "Come on, boys, you know you would if she let you" and "Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh my god, no" she has held many of our country's leading intellectuals enthralled; she has reduced grown men to tears purely by leaving the room and enslaved a thousand others merely by entering it. Founder of the Erotic Review and columnist on sex and sexuality she brings her inimitable style and devotion to AP lingerie to the fore as the aptly named Miss Spent-Youth!

10th January 2007

Thank the sex gods for ravishing Agent Provocateur pin-up Miss X, illuminating these dark winter days with a blazing striptease. Check out AP's website if you don't know what I'm talking about and live on Mars. Once again the maestro of sexual frisson, director Mike Figgis, shows us that Kate Moss' dreams are most people's hottest fantasies. Back here on planet mortal, my own dreams have a perturbing tendency to turn public displays of flesh into social humiliation. I dreamt the other night that I was at the local playground with my infant son when it slowly dawned on me that I was completely naked. To compound my horror, I was chatting to a bunch of alpha mums who were struggling to conceal their disapproval. I didn't need to call my friend the shrink to divine that this was probably an anxiety dream about being judged a "phoney" as a mother. I ask you, what kind of a mummy takes her two-year-old son to buy a French maid's outfit and some lube? I'll tell you, a journalist researching an article on sales assistants in sex shops.

But here's the strange thing; although being naked in my dreams is hideously embarrassing, in real life I often do things that a truly modest woman would find mortifying. When I was editor of The Erotic Review magazine, I waded into the sea at Brighton with a prom dress raised above my naked buttocks for our "saucy seaside" photo-shoot. Yes, since you ask, there were hoards of mildly astonished sunbathers on the beach. And last year the talented New York-based photographer, Circe, who specialises in erotic portraiture, asked whether I would disrobe for her. Now by this stage in my life I was 37, an age where you can no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, pass as "a girl" and therefore excuse bad behaviour as youthful exuberance. In the previous year I had given birth to my son by emergency caesarean, lost my mother to cancer, had had an appendectomy and a biopsy on a lump in my breast and, quite frankly, I was feeling a bit mortal.

And when you're feeling your mortality, there's no finer riposte to the Grim Reaper than to stick two fingers - or nipples - in the air. So, one hot day last June, I stripped to my finest Agent Provocateur undies and paraded my belly scars. I borrowed my saintly uncle's London flat as a backdrop. After half a bottle of Sancerre I had lost the bra and was stretched on all fours across my uncle's book-strewn coffee table. "Writhe!" Circe exhorted me, "Push your arse out!" The rest of the bottle disappeared with my knickers and I found myself naked on the couch beneath my uncle's Sarjant-style portrait of an innocent little Edwardian girl dressed for ballet class. I also suddenly realised I was exactly on eye level with top-deck passengers trundling down the Pimlico Road on old-style London buses.

Even as I write I am planning my outfit - or lack of it - for the launch of my compendium, The Decadent Handbook, published by Dedalus. An Agent Provocateur corset, a pair of their miraculous girdle-style knickers and some fishnets, that should do it. As Circe and I decided when we looked at her prints, half-dressed is invariably more kinky than full nudity. For Dutch courage I am necking a huge glass of Hendrick's gin, which is infused with rose petals, cucumber, eleven different botanical elements and ingredient X - undoubtedly a virgin's hymen. All this means it's probably the most decadent beverage on the planet. What I can definitely say is that it's smoothing my way to a spot of theatricals wonderfully well.

There is a word for women like me, and if it's not trollop, then I suspect it may be "exhibitionist." Though I only have a mild case of the syndrome. Really. I can assure you I have no wish to see my intimate bedroom frolics showcased on the internet, Paris Hilton style, for voyeurs to download. (Though maybe I'll reconsider when I'm 80 to terrify over-sexed schoolboys.) But it always strikes me that an occasional burst of exhibitionism is an extremely cheering thing. I adore the munificent men and women who streak at major sporting events. Nothing enlivens cricket (maybe we should end that sentence there, eh?) like the flash of a jiggling penis or a trimly waxed mons pubis.

I have an old friend who works for the corporate finance side of a huge international bank. She is a curvy size 14, wears discreet suits and sensible shoes and always behaves with the utmost decorum. Unless someone plays the first bars of "Big Spender"... A wild look comes over as she discards first her jumper, then her shirt, and finally her lacy brassiere to wild cheers from all onlookers. Another friend, who is even more Rubensesque, once happily removed her clothes in my office to enliven a photo-shoot for a national newspaper. Both these women know that confidence is one of the most seductive qualities on the planet. The point is you don't need to be Ms Moss to enjoy the therapeutic benefits of a little part-time stripping. It can be exhilarating to find your inner exhibitionist. But I wouldn't advise a naked cancan in the religious studies section of your local library. Unless your favourite accessory is handcuffs