WENCHES' KARNEVAL

I wouldn't normally think of a necktie as a babe magnet, especially not the navy-and-orange number I picked up in London before coming here, a garish Disney design best described as Mickey Mouse in an acid-rain haze.

Freudian implications aside, her scissors are the least of my worries. For all I know, there's a German detective, ein private dick, tailing me right now, to ensure that I don't indulge in that other time-honoured tradition of Wenches' Feast Night: adultery, coyly known as a 'sideways leap' in German.

To find out more about Weiberfastnacht, aka 'Dirty Thursday', I put in a call to the place where it supposedly all started.

Now Bonn, you'll recall, was until very recently the German capital, a city so respectable as to be boring, full of politicians puffed up with sauerkraut and its attendant hot air.

So it comes as something of a surprise to ring up the tourist office out of the blue and be given unsolicited advice on swinging.

'Brink lots of ties and you vill get lots of kiss.
Iff you don't brink ties, no kiss,' the woman informed me.
'I'll be sure to remember that.'
'Do you haff a partner?'
'Uhh... yes.'
'Denn brink your lady and you can haff lots of fun.
You can each haff separate party.'

What followed was a laugh so dirty I had to clean out my ears after hanging up. Nothing sounds smuttier than an innuendo delivered in a German accent.