I TAKE my hat off to my fellow columnist Jo Haywood, who told on Monday how she summoned up the courage to share a communal changing room with a group of naked old ladies.

I take my hat off, but absolutely nothing else.

Like Jo, I instinctively flinch at the idea of getting my kit off in public. It's always been the case, even when I had a waist, a flat belly and a visible ribcage.

I still awake wild-eyed and incoherent from nightmares about my school's communal showers, 30 years after the last time I used them.

In vain would exasperated people like the gym teacher or my mum ask me as I clung on to my underwear: "What's your problem? Have you got something we haven't got?"

Yes, was the answer: I had a perfectly reasonable aversion to pretending it was fine to cavort around naked in front of other people.

I'd love to be able to say, like Jo, that a seeing a load of pensioners letting it all hang out would liberate me from this revulsion, but I fear it might well bring on a fresh bout of post-traumatic stress - particularly if my mum were in the assembled company.

I'm not quite so squeamish that I prefer to think my parents only did it' to have me, but I would prefer not to be confronted with the physical evidence of their sexuality, if that's quite all right by you. And I certainly don't want to parade my own, erm, maturing adulthood in front of my mother.

You can tell I haven't had children, can't you?

I'm clearly a classic case for that weirdly compelling, car-crash-telly programme, How To Look Good Naked - although I am astonished that anyone has the metaphorical guts to put themselves through the ritual humiliation imposed by the show.

I can't imagine anything more awful than having to look at a 360-degree image of my podgy self in mismatched, ill-fitting undies, blown up seven storeys high and blasted over a public building in the centre of York while unfortunate passers-by get cornered by the show's extraordinary presenter, Gok Wan, and dragooned into telling me lies about how I've got nice calf muscles or something equally desperate.

Well actually, I can think of something worse. And that would be wobbling around starkers in front of a bored photography crew, with Gok ordering me to "hoik up those bangers, girl-friend" as I contort myself into a position where I might actually not frighten the horses.

Was it for this show that a group of women gathered in Castle Museum to prove they had nothing to be ashamed of as they got down to their undies or, in some cases, to nothing but a smile?

Good for them that they were relaxed enough to do it. And those that were later able to watch themselves without squirming over real or imagined imperfections have my sincere admiration.

Still, though, I find it difficult to look at Gok's team of naked testers' as they gather each week to give their opinion of some beauty product or other. Breasts pert, shrunken or pendulous, bellies firm or drooping and bottoms smooth or wobbling, with or without orange-peel puckers: the rich variety of womanhood is proudly on display.

There is no doubt that some (though in my personal opinion, not all) women look good naked. But is it really necessary for us to know exactly how good, in practically forensic detail?