The mystery of the school disco

If you, in spite of your relative youth and long-standing appreciation of bizarre British customs, are nonetheless bewildered by the sight of otherwise rational adults dressing like pubescent schoolchildren of an evening because it increases their chances of getting a shag, you have a friend in me. Why, you ask, does anyone feel the need to recreate a moment of their lives in which they were plagued by crippling paranoia, smatterings of pimples and the fear that they were loved by none but their own mothers? I hear you. And because nothing gives me greater pleasure than assisting my peers in their attempts to untangle the complex and tantalising mysteries that so blight their lives, I have imagined a scenario that may help you to understand the phenomenon known in these parts as the 'school disco'.

Once upon a time, the managing director of Costumez 4 U Ltd entered the conference room looking grave.

'Business is bad, my friends,' he said. 'Customers are bored. The nurse and the policewoman are not enough for them. The French maid is old news. We need something new, something better, something... cutting edge. Let me hear your ideas, my friends.'

And so brows were knit and brains were racked, and lo! there was an idea.

'I have it!' cried a be-suited yuppie. 'Let us celebrate the glory of youth with a smidgeon of adult naughtiness. Let us sex up the secondary school classroom!'

Heads turned in amazement.

'Fool!' spat a colleague. 'Do you want to get us sued?'

'On the contrary, it will be a triumph!' the yuppie continued. 'Sex and nostalgia! A more successful combination there never was! What woman doesn't remember a period when she wished with all her heart that she could expose her buttocks to her slavering male classmates without a pasty spinster giving her detention? What man hasn't, in his time, dreamed about taking the hand of a freckled sex-bomb in a Tipp-exed blazer and holey stockings and whisking her away from the restrictions of corridor decorum? For the sake of all that is good and profit-making, let us reawaken those torturous hormones and put them to good use! And this time they shall be heeded. This time their demands will be met. No more the suppressed urges of yesteryear! No more the regulation skirt lengths that once impeded our pursuit of happiness! This time there will be micro-skirts and non-existent blouses, suspender belts and six-inch heels, and when it is all over everyone will go home and have sex!'

There was a stunned silence, and then the conference room resounded with deafening applause.

And there, readers, is your answer.