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I’m trying my best to distract myself from the desperate disappointment of THAT single – you know, the one that definitively proved that there really is such a thing as ‘too gay’.  Even for G*g*.

So here’s a blast from the past – when pop music was still vital and vigorous instead of galvanic and twitching. Homoerotic instead of gayist. Climactic without the ‘anti’.  And what a distraction!  This is basically a bunch of young bucks in breeches f***king fully-dressed on national TV. In 1966. Note the guitarist brazenly, two-handedly tossing off his ‘axe’ above his snugly outlined package and flared thighs at 1.50

‘Girl, you better get straight.’

Fat chance with you providing kicks like that, lads.

This performance of ‘Kicks’ by Paul Revere and the Raiders a rather good example of how boy bands (and that would include of course those boy bands who call themselves ‘rock bands’) have always tended to have that slashy, manlove for ladies thing going on.

I suppose the relative ‘innocence’ of the 60s meant you could get away with so much more. I’m not entirely sure even the chaps in the skin-tight white breeches are fully aware of what they’re doing, even if their stylist was. Mind, this is only a decade after Elvis the Pelvis was famously filmed strictly from the waist up on the Ed Sullivan show. And he was wearing flannels.

When, I wonder, are tight white breeches going to make a comeback, other than on foxhunting toffs? And preferably without the frock coat covering the buttocks. Have they already? Did I blink and miss it? I suppose they did momentarily with Adam Ant’s wonderful dandy highwayman persona back in the early 80s – though he usually wore his punk leather trousers (and watching this clip I’m reminded that despite what he tells the press, Johnny Depp’s foppish pirate Jack Sparrow probably owes more to dandy highwayman Adam than it does Keith Richards).

Either way, I decree that the male thigh should definitely get much more attention. Along with the male buttock. While the male packet should probably be on display in a few more public places than photo-shopped designer underwear ads.

Until the 19th Century it almost always was.  The shape of a man’s leg was considered one of his most desirable features.  But even the tartiest male tarts today, seem to shy away from that kind of display. Instead like Mikey Sorrentino, they want to distract your attention upwards – towards heaven – and have you admire their divine abs and cleavage instead, while protecting their virtue with those baggy jeans/track-pants/board-shorts/male burkhas that American males (and their Anglo admirers) have worn religiously since the 80s, with the advent of the Age of Speedophobia.

Tip: Frances Eby