It’s that time again, when self-conscious men go shopping for underwear for their loved ones. Of course, they usually buy the wrong style, often in the wrong size. Reluctant shopper Neil Tweedie gets some sound advice:

There are only three reasons why a man should be in a lingerie department: he’s lost, he’s the store manager, or he’s a blackmail case in waiting, taking the morning off from the Foreign Office. Other than that, there’s really no justification for entangling oneself in that strange other world of female underwear.

Buy the wife a Black & Decker Workmate by all means. It’s a sensible gift from which she will derive years of pleasure while hopefully adding substantially to the value of the house. And, crucially, it’s an item comprehensible to the male mind. But bras and knickers? You’re just asking for trouble.

The thing is that men can only ever get it wrong.

Choose one of those catapult things, a thong or whatever it’s called, and you will in all probability be told a) you have no taste, b) you’re just a shaven-ape sleazeball with a typical one-dimensional male mind, or asked c) how you would feel having to wear a cheese slicer under your trousers for the entirety of a drinks party?

But if you play safe and buy a more generous knicker, opting for the bigger of two sizes to ensure a comfortable fit, it will be: “So I’m fat, then! You think I’m fat, don’t you? You could hold a bloody wedding reception in those!”
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So, gentlemen, don’t do it. Even now, at Christmas, when concern about finding a suitable gift is turning to desperation, combined with an aching desire to get the whole awful business of present-buying out of the way. Take a trip down to the hardware shop and choose a nice ironing board instead.

But if you have to – if you really, really have to – go knicker-hunting, then at least join one of the two one-day Christmas Lingerie Academies at John Lewis in London’s Oxford Street.

There the frazzled husband or boyfriend will be offered sensible female advice on how to make an appropriate festive purchase while surrounded by reassuringly laddish paraphernalia: a comfy sofa, a fridge full of beer and, for the really mature, plasma screens on which to play a selection of computer games.

Trainees can even bring their loved ones along if they want to, but that’s not really the point.
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- Source: Telegraph, Dec. 7, 2007