The story can now be told. 

I have worn tights, stockings, pantyhose… I wore them, and I wore them on television so all could see. So, now it’s all out there.

I wasn’t all out there, if that’s where your mind went. It was 1970-something and I was younger and sufficiently svelte to, um, display said stockings, pantyhose, without revealing much of anything else. 

Long story, short. (sorry) A well-established hosiery manufacturer, doesn’t matter who, was trialling what it described as pantyhose for men. 

Manihose… that was the name. Please stop giggling. As the selling point was that Manihose brought warmth to the wearer, they were being field-tested in Tasmania, considered the coldest bit of antipodean real estate.  

Somehow, a pair of Manihose found its way to the commercial TV current affairs show on which I was a cameraman. Yes. We made actual programs back then. And yes, yes. I got the job. Thanks for asking.

Basically, I needed to pull them over my underwear, and stand front of one of the silver-grey Marconi cameras we used. The Manihose were blue, and the underwear orange. You’ve got the picture.

The trick was not to move. At all. 

For reasons of decency and the protection of family values nationwide – I am not making this up – broadcasting codes at the time precluded underwear models from moving. If we recorded ads for underwear, we’d use still photographs. 

The TV presenter took a minute to explain why such a display warranted the public’s attention and showed his audience a brief-ish glimpse of my lower half, blue with an undercurrent of orange.

He, the presenter, was graceful and amusing, and absolutely nothing happened. 

Now, you know that fame has been ignited by smaller things, careers kicked into gear in moments of serendipity. Wasn’t Mark Wahlberg propelled into moviedom from Calvin Klein’s underwear department? 

It was not to be, not for me. In truth, I gave it no thought whatsoever. I had to get back to work, pronto.

There wasn’t even time to shed the tights; I zipped up my jeans over the Manihose and plunged into the rest of the day’s production schedule.

It was later, much later, that things went sideways.

I was on my way home. Changing buses in the city centre, I found myself in urgent need of a pee, so I ducked into the nearest toilets.

Here, in the utilitarian confines of a public facility, pressed by the schedule of the Number 46 bus and caught by nature’s call, I came to grasp the inevitable future failure of the Manihose brand.

There is no fly in stockings, pantyhose or Manihose. Yet men have need of a fly… it’s an anatomical necessity.

In the circumstances, I took matters into my own hands (sorry) and peeled my jeans down my knees, followed the Wranglers with the Manihose, and finally the orange underwear. I was now free to pee.

(Yes, women have to go through this ridiculous routine multiple times a day for their entire lives.) 

In case you haven’t stood at a public urinal, it is commonly a stainless steel trough designed to accommodate perhaps six gentlemen.

Let me add another pictorial element: the toilets are a block from the harbour, off which regularly arrives a cold ‘sea breeze’, now whistling around my naked nethers. 

It was about this moment when – and there’s no easy way to say this, but it is an accurate recounting – when approximately eight Japanese fishermen entered the public toilet.

I say approximately because I was not in any position to do a full count. I was facing the other way, so a quick glance had to suffice.

The clearest part of my recollection of that glance was that a couple of them were smiling. 

Broadly. Big, big smiles. 

This harbour town into which they had arrived was clearly welcoming of sailors, so went the conversation in my head. How long had these guys been at sea? Did I speak Japanese?

But this wasn’t the time for conversation. It was time for action, to do what every man would do in such circumstances… 

I did just that, grabbing my underwear, jeans and hose, reefing them skywards, somehow simultaneously turning and fleeing the public toilets and shortly thereafter, the city. 

The fly-free item, blue of colour, was disposed of not long after that. I have come to presume that field-testing of the Manihose product elsewhere, on other males across the antipodean landscape, also drew a negative response. 

We made the point that Manihose simply would not fly. A note of thanks, then, to this (largely) unknown brotherhood.

Between us, we saved the world from another half-cocked consumer product.

You’re welcome.