My friend will kill me for this, but I feel a pressing need to divulge to the world this fact: she wears a G-string. In times when the world and his wife seems to sport these strips of material that pass for underwear, this may not seem odd, but to me it was nothing short of shocking.

We have been mates for a long time and are the same age, shape and size. We have such a lot in common - way of life, humour, pastimes, and dress sense.

So, of course, I automatically assumed that under the jeans and baggy jumpers would lurk a pair of baggy, waist-high knickers, the kind that, when pegged out on the washing line billow like a sail on a great galleon.

How wrong I was.

"Is that Lucy's?" I asked when I spotted the offending item hanging like a catapult on the clothes' horse. I assumed they belonged to her teenage daughter - who I know is partial to them - and was taken aback when she replied: "No, it's mine."

Through bringing the subject up in the wider community - ie the park, the school gates - I have since found out that she is not the only friend I've got who wears one of these barely-there thongs.

At least three others do and I am beginning to feel in the minority. Yet surely I am not alone in not wishing to leave the house with only a piece of string for pants?

I can't think of anything more uncomfortable to place in such a sensitive area and wear day and night.

Until fairly recently they were confined to pole dancers not 40-something housewives with a clutch of children.

Some women even feel it necessary to let everyone see their thongs over their hipster trousers - a trend that was recently banned in French schools where teenage girls were displaying them above their jeans.

I admit I'm occasionally guilty of showing off my knickers above my trousers, but that is only because they are so big that when hoisted up they easily reach my chest.

At least if I got run over by a bus I could preserve my modesty.

Like Bridget Jones, I genuinely feel the need for big knickers. Yet for me even the kind that she wore in that now famous scene are out of bounds. The ones that are so stretchy they turn you from size 16 to size ten.

I bought some once, Sloggi I think they were called. Very appropriate - it was a long, hard slog squeezing into them.

Buying knickers is not an easy task. High leg, low leg, mini, midi, maxi, seamfree, lacy, controlling. And, I noticed on my last foray into a store's underwear department, many mentions of a 'G-back.'

Is this the same as the G-string?

Why is it called a G-string anyway? Does it rest against the G-spot, wherever that is?

My friends say that I should move with the times, that they find G-strings amazingly comfortable.

Maybe I'm just out of touch and scared of change, but with my buttocks more like those of a hippo (that's an idea - I'm sure 'hippo' jeans would sell just as well as hipsters) than a hip young thing I really would much rather keep it all in than let it all hang out.

However, if I know my friend - particularly after having read this - I'll be receiving a small parcel labelled Pretty Polly for Christmas.

Updated: 10:09 Monday, November 10, 2003