Basically, wearing it turns you into a better, more attractive you with all
the minor kinks and imperfections ironed out and all your assets thrown indecently forward. Once you don it, your surrogate second skin clings to you like a self-conscious koala, comes in the colour of your choice, and is guaranteed to turn on more or less half the people currently alive.

What’s not to like? If you don’t believe us, check out Peter Czernich’s column this month on p34 to see how deep some people’s Latex love affair can run. So let’s use the remaining space to laugh at people who would probably pee themselves if they saw lovely Sophie Howard dressed like that. Sir James Goldsmith (father of socialite Jemima Khan) had an almost debilitating rubber phobia.

In her memoirs, his widow, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, recounted a time when he freaked out on a plane when he saw a discarded rubber band. “Rubber bands were the worst manifestation of the phobia and he could be physically sick if he saw one,” she wrote. He didn’t just leave that plane but he refused to fly with the same airline in case there were other rogue rubber bands waiting to get him. Even in a magazine based around tolerance, I think it’s fair to call him some kind of a freak.