Deborah Ross: A smoking hot bum is too much trouble

If you ask me...

If you ask me, all this business about Pippa Middleton's bum, which now has its own Facebook appreciation page (150, 000 followers) and T-shirt slogans ("If only Pippa were a Stripper" ) and jokes ("Even Bin Laden popped his head out for a look....bet he regrets it now!") had me worried, and worried good, and my worry was this: has my bum ever stolen anyone's big day? Has it?

I tossed. I turned. I looked at my arse in a mirror, over my shoulder, and saw that it was smoking hot; saw that it was tight, sculpted, slightly lofted and that "Deb's Arse, Pure Class" would not be an inappropriate T-shirt slogan. "Oh dear," I sighed, thinking about all the brides I must have inadvertently upstaged over the years. "Oh, dear."

I phoned my own sister, Toni, who would have remained nameless had my parents failed to name her, but they were good parents, in that way. And although we weren't dispatched to Marlborough, they did make sure we wouldn't go though life being known as "Oi, you", which is recognised as one of the best starts you can ever give a child.

So I phone Toni and say: "Toni, when you married Peter, did my arse steal your wedding day?" "No," she says. "Are you sure?," I persist. "Yes," she says. "Now, go away. I'm in Tesco." Toni is often short with me, but I understand; understand the years of resentment which must build up if your sister has a smoking hot arse, as I do.

I phone my brother, who would also have remained nameless had my parents not been single-mindedly ambitious for him, and so went to quite a lot of trouble naming him Jon. "Jon," I said. "When you married Mary, did my arse spoil your day?" "No," he says, "although I believe it spoiled the view for some of the guests. Mary's Auntie Jean couldn't see a thing." "Jon," I say, "you do realise my arse is smoking hot, don't you?". "In your dreams," he says.

In my dreams? I check. I look in the mirror again, over my shoulder, and now see my arse looks like a fat, quivering mound of gouged Play-Doh or, perhaps, soggy dumplings swinging in a plastic carrier. Damn, I had dreamed my smoking hot arse. I phone back my siblings. "That's OK," says my sister. "You going to mum's on Thursday?" "Yeah, alright," I say.

Generally, a smoking hot arse is probably more trouble than it's worth, but you know what? It was nice while I had it. And it suited me.