Good evening. You'd have thought Formula One racing had little in common with Greek mythology,

but they've both fallen victim to the latest wave of feminist susceptibility

that some critics are calling a new Puritanism.

The casualties at Formula One are the so-called grid girls,

the pretty but peripheral scantily-clad lovelies who prance around the pits.

They, like their sisters, the walk-on girls,

who escort darts players onto the stage at televised championships, are being done away with,

well, no longer employed, because they're seen as objectifying women, reducing them to objects

of sexual desire. The feminists were less successful, ones tempted to say, got their knickers in a

twist, with Greek mythology, the famous pre-Raphaelite painting, Waterhouse's Hylus and the Nymphs,

was removed from display at Manchester Art Gallery for a week, but it was reinstated after a

public outcry. The picture shows the Argonaut Hylus being serenaded by some damply lubricious

nymphs. The story, of course, is that they fancied him because of his astonishing beauty,

despite him being Hercules gay toy boy.

They took him off, turned him straight, and he was never seen again.

A story, actually, of female empowerment,

in which it was the male that was objectified,

which just goes to show how tricky this at all is. Where, for instance,

do you draw the line? The egregious spreading of half-naked female flesh across car bonnets at

motor shows is pretty silly as well as, to some, offensive. But would ugly models work?

Should it be as wrong to employ women for their looks as it would be to discriminate on the basis of race or religion?

That's our moral maze tonight.

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