Every year when the BBC broadcasts its correspondents’ lookahead for the year I would debate with my colleague Denis Murray

Every year when the BBC broadcasts its correspondents’ “lookahead” for the year, I would debate with my colleague Denis Murray. He consistently argued that a deal in Ulster was possible, I repeatedly said the polarisation was too great So much for predictions. The Good Friday Agreement and the referendum turned me into an optimist I am still hopeful, in spite of the threat to David Trimble. I only hope that Belfast is watching Gaza. Fergal Keane is a BBC Special Correspondent.

There are worse things than losing the top of your dress in front of 12 million television viewers, especially as Judy Finnigan, the breakfast-show presenter to whom it happened recently, was wearing a perfectly decent bra underneath. Less a storm in a teacup than a storm in a D-cup if you ask me, and I’d rather you didn’t because I don’t know her bra size, and it’s not a fact you can afford to get wrong. There are worse things than losing the top of your dress in front of 12 million television viewers, especially as Judy Finnigan, the breakfast-show presenter to whom it happened recently, was wearing a perfectly decent bra underneath. Less a storm in a teacup than a storm in a D-cup if you ask me, and I’d rather you didn’t because I don’t know her bra size, and it’s not a fact you can afford to get wrong.
As I said, there are worse things. Smiling coquettishly over the candles at your dinner date with spinach in your front teeth is worse. Tripping and falling spreadeagled in front of 500 pupils at assembly, as happened once to the High Mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School, is worse.

Being called Harry Pratt – I know three – is worse.So why all the fuss, the front-page pictures in the tabloids, the interviews with Judy afterwards, and even a couple of editorials praising the dignified way she carried it off, or rather carried them off?Because it’s a story about breasts, and for some reason any story about breasts, boobs, tits, knockers, Bristols – call them what you will – seems to fascinate both men and women equally, albeit for different reasons. Men don’t really want stories, they just want pictures; women are more interested in the anatomical details – size, shape, volume, etc, because with few exceptions, if we were given the choice we’d all have new ones. I defy any woman to say she’s absolutely satisfied with the pair she’s got. Bigger, smaller, rounder, fuller, higher or even, as Sylvester Stallone famously told the plastic surgeon about to operate on his girlfriend’s chest, “a little, you know, perkier.”For reasons I’m still trying to work out I was once invited to take part in a live TV debate about breast enlargement and reduction, otherwise known as boob-jobs. Three young women who had recently undergone breast surgery had agreed to come into the studio, flaunt themselves and answer questions.