The demand for mince has increased by 22 per cent over the past fortnight.The Meat and Livestock Commission chairman, Don Curry, puts the rise in demand down to the introduction of the Quality Minced Beef Standard. Four out of five meat retail outlets now carry distinctive blue and red rosettes on their packs of mince.A commission spokesman said: "The rosette is proof to the consumer that the mince has no added offal and is in fact just prime meat. Mince was the worst hit of the beef meat products but now we are winning back our market.". Consider, gentlemen, what the following submissions might have in common: The presentation in court of a "stunning" 20-year-old girlfriend; a wife's testimony to a "normal, happy, loving relationship, both emotionally and physically"; the opinion that the alleged victim looks "like a bulldog chewing a wasp". The answer? They could all help secure your acquittal, should you find yourself up on a sexual assault charge.

Indecent assault cases offer an enthralling insight into modern social and sexual mores. The scenes outside Bradford Crown Court last Tuesday, however, provided two very different versions. Police constable Robert Bridle was descending the steps a free man, acquitted of indecent assault charges against two female colleagues after the judge declared he deserved only a "sound ticking off" for office "horseplay". For some assembled on the steps, the words signalled an alarming throwback to the darkest days of sexual inequality, when the woman was always Asking For It, and should learn how to take a Bit Of Fun.For others, they echoed our mounting confusion about how men and women are meant to behave around each other these days. And many onlookers were left pondering the question: precisely when is indecent assault not indecent assault?"An indecent assault," the law tells us, with rare tautological panache, "is an assault committed in circumstances of indecency". Critically, it must be proven that the accused acted intentionally, in full knowledge of these "indecent circumstances". Few would suggest that a stranger making a violent lunge at a woman's breasts could be ignorant of "indecent circumstances".