Cancan

Having read and agreed with Victoria Coren's excoriation of School Cheerleading, I was disappointed to be corrected by a younger (female) person who apparently knows about these things and told me that British schools have male cheerleaders too. There goes that little bit of (male) feminist outrage in me, and leaves me feeling slightly bewildered, as if a lamb had got up and head-butted me for my vegetarianism.

If indeed we have equal opportunities cheerleading the UK, then I suppose the argument moves from "is it sexist bullshit" to purely "is it sport?". And the problem that goes with that is simply that no-one has an agreed definition of what sport actually is, so any attempt to answer the question reveals a suitcase full of interesting prejudices and preconceptions that say quite a lot about the person shoving their oar in. Ooh, that was a sporty metaphor. Or was it?

I have grave misgivings about the idea of dance as sport, but I'll also admit that this is based on no real analysis of the arguments and little more than a lingering feeling that giving someone a Gold medal in Traditional Morris is sillier than giving the same for running into a sandpit in a slightly complicated way.

Which it may not be.

All of which has left me feeling a little bit confused and lacking in a good dose of moral certainty and outrage. So what I need the Government to do - right now - is introduce can-can dancing to the national curriculum, making it eligible only to pretty girls whose legs represent at least 60% of their total height and who have perfect skin. Then all I'd have to do is wrestle with whether or not it was more sexist and degrading than Beach Volleyball.