HAS your bikini migrated yet? If you are a man, I'm assuming the answer is "no" because a) the go-faster stripe of hair down your back doesn't look great in a bikini; b) you gave up wearing bikinis a long time ago - tankinis are your costume of choice these days; or c) you still haven't got past the word "bikini" and have been rendered incapable of answering any question that needs more than a grunt in reply.

If you are a woman, on the other hand, you will know immediately what the bikini migration entails. It happens every year without fail: we get a smidgeon of sunny weather and that bag of bikinis, swimsuits and shorts makes its way out of the loft and on to the bed before you can say "forget the Brazilian wax, it's time to get the hedge strimmer out Bernard".

Like salmon swimming upstream to spawn and birds flying south for winter (except the ones in Rowntree Park, which are too fat to get over the park gate and too spoiled to settle for anything less than an M&S seeded batch loaf with the crusts removed), bikinis all over the country struggle out of their black plastic bags at the start of the summer on a single-minded mission to taunt women with their skimpiness.

This year, I'm campaigning for a cull. All the bikinis in the world should be rounded up, tied together and set alight in a symbolic boob-shaped pyre.

Why? Because I hate them. They look great on about 0.0001 per cent of the population - that's approximately 147 women, who all live in Rio and do nothing but appear in holiday programmes (general frolicking) and adverts (running towards the camera bouncily; running away from the camera bouncily).

The rest of us look awful. I'm sorry, but we do. If you're too thin, you look like a bunch of kindling tied up with string. And if your cups tend to runneth over, you look like a blancmange being pushed through a tennis racket. Either way, it ain't pretty.

And even if you are a slim size 10 or 12, with all your bits and bobs vaguely where they should be, a bikini still makes the average woman feel about as comfortable as, well, an average woman strutting about in public wearing little more than a hanky and two postage stamps.

But still we do it.

I say we, but to be honest I would rather run down Coney Street in a balaclava and my grandma's support tights than saunter along the sand in a bikini anymore. I threw the beach towel in some years ago when I caught sight of myself in what I thought was a very fetching cossie, but which actually made my bottom look like two over-ripe oranges in a string bag.

This doesn't mean however that the bikini migration has stopped.

My ridiculous collection of bikinis, swimsuits and shorts still arrive on the bed like clockwork every year, it's just that now I choose not to wear them, opting instead to wear the tops over my sweater and the bottoms on my head to amuse the children.

I know some of you are still torturing yourselves needlessly though. Nothing short of a mandatory cross-cultural, cross-border ban will stop you, which is why I'm launching my campaign for next week's European elections.

Okay, so I might be cutting it a bit fine in terms of TV advertising, and of course I realise I'm far too late to nab a celeb to wheel out for the cameras - even the clapped-out old has-beens have all been snaffled up by the "we hate everyone who isn't English, or posh, or a celeb" party - but I think my message is strong enough to win through. Ban the bikini now!

Updated: 09:50 Monday, May 31, 2004