What constitutes a best butt?

I HAVE a nice nose. I’m going to cut a hole in a paper bag and stick it on my head. This way people will focus on my best feature.

I might even be able to persuade Townsville’s new Gold Lotto millionairess to give up her happy marriage and run away with me.

She’ll get a shock, of course, when she takes the paper bag off and discovers the rest of my face is like a Beirut bomb site, but she can always slap the paper bag back on.

I got the idea from reading in the Townsville Bulletin about the Best Butt contest at Julia Creek this weekend. They plan to cover the contestants’ faces because last year the judges were so smitten by faces and boobs they couldn’t concentrate on the butts.

I don’t think I’ve quite got it. Do the contestants have faces on the backs of their heads? Or breasts on their shoulder blades? Or are their backsides facing the wrong way?

How do you become confused by someone’s upper anatomy if you’re assessing the lower half, which is facing the other way, for heaven’s sake?

This is quite apart from any debate about what constitutes a best butt. Are we going for size here? Or shape? Are there standards to adhere to, like the degree of overhang? Is it important than both halves match, if you know what I mean.

And I want to know if they’re planning to cover only the faces. Why not the boobs?

That would pose some interesting problems.

Would you strap ’em down? or cover them in a sack? If they needed a sack that might make them more interesting than they previously were.

And I see they’re giving prizes for the most entertaining butt. They don’t define entertaining.

The mind boggles.

I had an uncle once whose flatulence could have powered a small city. When he came to dinner the combination of his unfortunate condition and our stifled laughter (I was ten at the time) could blast peas and mash across the table and into the fireplace.

He certainly entertained us.

Or maybe it’s like Red Faces and you play the drums with extraordinary control of the cheek muscles.

I am not talking faces, though.

But anyway – surely a butt is only as good as the body it trails behind.

I mean, it could be the size of an archery target but if the owner were ten metres tall it would fit quite nicely (I shall leave you with the thought that an archery range, with its line of targets, is known as the butts).

Me, I’m sticking with the nose. My butt won’t be winning any prizes. It’s the size of a semi-inflated rubber dinghy and just as hard to contain in a pair of trousers.

But a nose has character. A nose says noble, or dishonest; strong-minded, or pugnacious. A butt can’t say much except big or small – unless it’s my uncle’s.