LET'S just see if I've got this right because it's fiendishly confusing. You can buy cigarettes and lottery tickets at 16. You can drive a car at 17 and at 18 you can vote and buy alcohol in a pub or off-licence.

At 16 you can legally have sex, unless it's gay sex when I think - and I'm no expert on the subject - the age of consent is 18, although the Government is planning to lower it.

Boy, I'm so pleased I'm not a purveyor of alcohol and tobacco, or a young man on the pull, because I would always be getting arrested.

I mean, how can you tell how old they are these days? At 15 they can be six feet tall, have breasts like a Bay Watch babe and eye make-up that would make Cleopatra look like Sister Angelica. And that's just the boys!

What brought on this particular line of soul-searching voyeurism? I went to a school fashion show the other evening and I was impressed, gobsmacked, proud and shocked. It takes some doing all at the same time.

You see I'm a satellite-TV Fashion Channel addict. Non-stop international fashion shows from Paris to Peking, Milan to Miami. It is masochistic TV. I watch simply to be appalled. It's like tapping a spoon on a bad tooth, exquisite agony.

All those seven-foot stick insects doing that funny catwalk prance where they lean back at a dangerous angle and their feet cross over each other by at least a yard.

They are obliged to scowl or their clothes fall off. The expression tells the audience and the world: "I seriously loathe you and the horse you rode into town on. I hate these worthless rags I'm wearing and I'm only doing it for the money - and the drugs."

And then there are those outrageous "fashions", the Frankenstein concoctions created from the screaming nightmares of the tortured designers. Who would ever wear that stuff, let alone pay thousands for it? And if those designs are so good, how come the creator always walks on at the end wearing the obligatory plain black trousers and T-shirt looking like a bag of washing?

So how refreshing it was to see a school fashion show where the walk was natural; the designs were - generally - palatable; and the models' figures were like you'd see in any high street.

On the front row only parents, no fashion media darlings gasping sycophantically, scribbling furiously before sharpening their talons and publishing crippling reviews.

Back to my original point. Not one of the kids in this show was over 16 because the school throws them out into the wider world at that age. Yet made up and dressed to kill, some of them could have passed for 28.

There were small ones and tall ones, large ones and skeletal ones, and they all looked lovely.

They were glowing with pride, showing off all their own work. For they had shed blood (whatever happened to thimbles?), sweat and tears creating these garments.

I know, I've seen a frock hurled across the room when some seam wasn't perfect; frantic midnight ironing to get the item completed in time for the textiles course-work deadline.

But it was the confidence of these girls that shook me. How could they get on that stage and walk at the pace of the Death March, then rotate like a roast on a spit in front of hundreds of ogling eyes?

It was an impressive sight.

There was just a sprinkling of boys - merely props for the girls and uncomfortable in suits - who braved the catwalk catcalls.

Oh, and one male textiles student who designed and made dresses for the lasses who came on at the end to take a bow, dressed... all in black.

What made it an even greater pleasure was that parents and pals were taking photographs and videoing the whole thing. Good old North Yorkshire.

If that had been Edinburgh or one of those other knee-jerk council areas, such filming would have been banned in case it got into the hands of paedophiles. Loony.

Updated: 11:33 Tuesday, April 15, 2003