Ian McMillan: Diffculties of carrying out an undercover job

Because of my half-blind state I couldn't make out the faces of the blokes at the next table, which is just as well, given what they were talking about. They were discussing lingerie. Or, as the older of the two put it, "sexy pants for our lass". He was a smoothie, I could tell. One for the ladies. His mate wasn't convinced, though.

"A feller at our works once got his wife one of them theer basques for Christmas," he said, in a high voice that sounded like chalk down a board. He didn't pronounce it "basque", though, as us men of the world would. He pronounced it "baskway".

The other man made that encouraging noise we all make when we want somebody to continue an anecdote, that noise that's a hybrid of "aye" and "eee" and "um" and is a kind of punctuation. The steam on my glasses was starting to clear but I made the mistake of taking another sip and they fogged again.

The squeaky-voiced gent resumed his tale. "He bought it two sizes too small so when she zipped hersen into it on Christmas morning she couldn't get her breath and't gusset stopped her circulation and she fainted and fell over into a pot plant."

His companion let out a long sigh and said "By..." The whole caf had gone silent as several people pictured the scene, either as a cartoon or a Socialist Realist painting or a vividly coloured photograph. I heard a snorting, choked-off laugh from the far corner, obviously from somebody who found the word gusset as funny as I did.

I thought about that unintentionally comic duo the other day when, like Father Ted in that classic episode, I found myself by accident in the lingerie section of a department store. One minute I was in Soft Furnishings and the next minute I was in Really Soft Furnishings, if you get my drift.

It was as though I had stumbled into one of the country's last working lace mines.

All around me were what people of a certain age call Unmentionables and Smalls and what men in Rotherham cafes call Baskways. I didn't know where to look, except at the floor.

I should have moved, of course, but I was nervous of turning the wrong way and ending up even deeper in some kind of Stocking Cavern. When I eventually glanced up I saw a strange sight; like crows in a cornfield, several men were darting up and down the aisles of frothy things, heads bobbing, hands darting out then back into pockets.

Even though the temperature in the shop was, well, shop-temperature, they had a sheen of sweat on their furrowed brows. These were the equivalent of the pants-discussers in the Rotherham caf: normally emotionally buttoned-up Yorkshiremen who thought they should buy something frilly and romantic for their wives or girlfriends as a Christmas gift.

Who knows where this idea comes from? Who knows what TV advert or giant hoarding glimpsed from the top deck of a morning bus makes these men think they'll try something different this year? Does passion need reigniting? Won't a nice Chinese meal and a bottle of Mateus Rose do the trick? Apparently not. I walked briskly to the other side of Suspender Alley and watched from the safety of the pots and pans, my face reflected in a big silver kettle as I observed the rituals like an anthropologist on a field trip.

One man just couldn't make up his mind. He stood in front of item after item. At each item he gazed up to the ceiling, squinting and obviously trying to picture his loved one sporting the garment in question.

One man held up a bra like he was looking through a giant pair of red binoculars. One man dropped a thong and daren't pick it up.

One man, bizarrely, was consulting a shopping list scribbled on a piece of cardboard. I couldn't read the contents from so far away but I tried to imagine them: Dog Food. Wrapping Paper. Pencil. Tablecloth. Sexy Pants for Our Lass.

He had lots of bags with him, so it was obvious that he'd almost got the lot. Just the sexy pants to buy and then he could go to the car park and get home for a corned-beef sandwich.

I'll tell you what: let's compare sightings of these men, almost like bird-watchers do. Let's write down their odd behaviour and their grating cries of Baskway! Baskway! Keep still, though; don't let your notebook rustle. You don't want to startle them, do you? Or perhaps you do…