The bare truth

This year's prize for the most bizarre quote goes to the Countryside Commission for Wales’ Wil Sanderson, who said their patrols had come across a number of nudists this year – despite the poor weather.

He said: “We’re trying to stop the nudists. We’ve written to the British Naturist Society to tell them that Llanddwyn isn’t a naturist beach and to the police. It isn’t an offence to be nude, it’s only an offence when somebody is offended.”

The Naturist argument rears its - er - head every summer and certainly deserves the ridicule it receives. Staunch defender of the "Right To Be Offended By The Utterly Inoffensive" society, councillor Enid Mummery said, “We don’t want nudists here. It’s not fair for families with young children."

We're sorry, young children? And why, exactly, is it not fair? Does she assume that the young will be permanently traumatised by the sight of a few, aged, pot-bellied gentlemen, strolling innocently between the dunes, or is she afraid that rampant lust will overtake her as she glimpses the svelte bodies of physically impressive under-25s?

It's not young children who will be affected. It's the repressed and often mentally damaged individuals, whose upbringing has imbued them with a fear and terror of the natural and normal ,and who feel they have a duty to pass on their own, phobia-ridden predilections and hang-ups to their children and - worse - inflict their self-righteousness on others.

We say it's time to make a clean breast of it, get to the bottom of the case and start a new religion: first church of the terminally naked. Then we'll see a few hang-ups - or should that be 'hangs-up'?