You don’t have to be a sadist to work in the civil service, but it may help

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Is your PVC plunge corset chafing today, madam? How about your pleather codpiece, sir? A bit uncomfortable as you commuted to work? Well, I must say fetish gear would not be my choice of outfit for a day hunched over the office keyboard. It’s so impractical, I find, queueing in the work canteen wearing nipple clamps. I can’t even bear to wear tight trousers to sit at a desk all day. But we mustn’t judge.
Because perhaps you work at the civil service where the dress code would appear to be rather more “liberal”. Baroness Jenkin of Kennington has tabled an unusual question, namely asking the government to state its policy on “civil servants wearing fetish clothing in the workplace”. Life comes at you fast: I remember when they wore pinstripe suits and bowler hats.
A follow-up question demanded that the government clarify whether “Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism [is] a protected characteristic within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010”. Well it makes a change from wind farms, I suppose. It was apparently prompted by the fact that a civil servant, a trans woman and co-chair of the LGBT+ network at the Department for Work and Pensions, comes to the office attired in a tight low-cut corset top, fishnet tights, heels and a black gothic choker with a pentagram. This hasn’t gone unnoticed, with some colleagues reportedly complaining that it is highly inappropriate and “almost like fetish gear”.
Some would call that “self-expression”, others “blatant attention-seeking”. My guess is the government will plump for the former. And then where will Whitehall be, eh? Awash with crotchless pants with spank benches installed in the chill-out areas in case someone wants to exercise their right to de-stress with a lunchtime thrashing? And no one will dare to object lest they are accused of being old-fashioned and unsupportive of minority interests.
Much as I wish to be “modern” this would put me off applying to the civil service. Not because I’m easily shocked or prudish but because I couldn’t keep up with the peer pressure. When I started work I couldn’t even hack the tight waistband on the mandatory A-line skirt. How would I cope attending meetings in a leather harness and ankle restraints?
Straight from university I spent an ill-judged year as a trainee store manager at Sainsbury’s and the uniform included a polyester skirt in a fetching shade of “shit brown”. I can still remember that skirt’s unyielding waistband digging in all day like cheese wire. By home time my stomach had distended like a Space Hopper. Imagine having post-lunch bloat in a full latex bodysuit. Or driving to work wearing a chastity cage under your trousers (do mind the speed bumps). Not to mention the perspiration in this humid weather. So much better for productivity, surely, to wear nice pull-on summer slacks in a comfort fit.
Still, I’m grateful to the BDSM community if only for the joy they bring via their reviews on Etsy. “Great sting to it!” said one happy purchaser of a tawse paddle. “The quality is great,” said another of their handcrafted flogger, adding they were deducting a star “because I ordered one with red stitching and received one with black stitching”. Fair enough. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being spanked in the wrong colour palette.
But, live and let live. Remember those men in gimp suits and masks who kept popping up around England? We should have perhaps paid them more respect. They might have been on their way home from a hard day’s work at the Treasury office.
• My power shower pose is with a face flannel and grout cleaner
Dolce & Gabbana has launched an £84 perfume for dogs, an exciting moment for the world. Far too many dogs these days are letting themselves go. Have they no self-respect, never thinking to say: “Hey Mum, I think I need a bath.” Or “Let’s cut back on my treats for a while. I’m becoming a bit of a unit.”
My dog was quite up for spaffing the weekly food budget on a bottle of Fefé, named after Domenico Dolce’s miniature poodle, as she knows you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. But then she saw that it contains “delicate notes of ylang ylang, musk and sandalwood” and said: “F*** that for a game of soldiers.
“If it’s not going to make me smell like I’ve rolled in rancid fox poo then why bother?” she went on, before licking her bottom.
Of course it was inevitable: a decade ago D&G launched a perfume for babies that was said to evoke “the freshness of baby breath”. So why not just smell the actual baby’s breath, you might think. Well, that’s the thinking of a cynical loser, I’m afraid. So I look forward soon to the launch of dog eyeshadow, dog Botox and dog Spanx, a must-have for the “curvier canine”.
How do you lose at the Olympics but also win — big? Ask the French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati, whose hopes of bagging a medal were spectacularly ruined — by his penis.
His not-so-Jolly Roger hit the cross bar with such an impressive clout that it brought it down, instantly making him an internet legend. Did sympathy come his way? No. Only admiration. “What a guy” cooed men online. Talk about being “cursed and blessed simultaneously”, said others.
So famous has Ammirati’s crotchmanship become, the adult site CamSoda has offered him £200,000 for a 60-minute webcam show. So now he will for ever be known as the pole vaulter who lost the Olympics because his manhood was too big. As people keep saying on Twitter/X, it’s a cross that he’ll have to somehow bear.