There are no trends in menswear. As the Milan shows proved, it's only the details that change.

ALTHOUGH we do sometimes publish articles about Christmas shopping in this travel section, I have to confess that going on holiday to shop always struck me as a contradiction in terms. Was not shopping after all a particularly painful form of work, and were not holidays supposed to mean an absence of work?

Bank staff should brace themselves for a mystifying start to the New Year in case customers demand accounts be converted into equarders, eus or even curos rather than the newly introduced euro. With just over two weeks to E-day, a survey reveals 51 per cent of those questioned still do not know the correct name of the new European single currency. Only five per cent surveyed in the BBC Money Programme poll knew euro notes and coins would be introduced in 2002, and 90 per cent had no idea the euro would be worth around 70p. European Movement director Steven Woodard said the findings illustrated how out of touch people were with events on the other side of the Channel. Try our quiz to find out if your euro knowledge is up to speed...

Huge, bell-shaped skirts look great in period dramas. And there they should stay, warns James Sherwood

A statuesque Austrian woman wearing a crown, a lurid green bikini and a matching sash reading "Miss Asparagus" sashays into a television studio to sit on the knee of a suave Frenchman. "Would you mind taking a look at my asparagus?" he asks, in more of a simple than a double entendre. "How does it compare to other boys' asparagus? What part do you prefer - the shaft or the tip?" Having salaciously invited the woman to gorge herself on some asparagus, the man then wonders: "Was it as good for you as it was for me?" The spirit of Carry On is not dead. It lives on in Eurotrash.

THE triumph of Dana International, trans-sexual Israeli winner of this year's Eurovision Song Contest, sparked emotions of biblical proportions yesterday. The young and open-minded celebrated a new diva, while the singer herself claimed divine inspiration. Back home, disgusted ultra- Orthodox Jews expressed the opposite view.

THE TRANS-SEXUAL singer from Israel, Dana International, won one of the most eventful Eurovision Song Contests for years last night, only securing victory in the final round of voting with her song "Diva".

shopperholic

Menswear designers have already decided what the fashionable male will be wearing next autumn: it's either cobweb knits, Edwardiana, north African layers or that old favourite, a crisply tailored miniskirt. Ian Phillips braved the stampedes. Photographs by Andrew Thomas.

PETER YORK ON ADS No 207: JEAN PAUL GAULTIER'S FRAGANCE

Check it out, Sassenachs. Vivienne Westwood is not the only one south of the Border to be wild about tartan.

They don't drop needles, and they're re-usable, but how do they look? We hang our lights on artificial trees

Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies by Stella Bruzzi Routledge pounds 45/pounds 12.99

Skin Two Rubber Ball, tonight, Hammersmith Palais