Kelly Brook in Ultimo lingerie

Kelly shows off her lovely waist/hip ratio.


Kelly Brook has been announced as the new, er, "face" of Ultimo lingerie with the welcome release of some new pictures of the lovely creature.



Ultimo, despite its Italian sounding name, was set up in that well known fashion centre, Glasgow, just over ten years ago. Michelle Mone, its founder, has always known how to get maximum publicity for her (otherwise not very well known) range by using a host of celebrities to pose in her products.


Kelly: up against the wall. Splendid concept!


In the past she has used Sarah Harding, Mel B, Jade Jagger, Peaches Geldof and Gemma Atkinson. Most controversially, she replaced Rod Stewart's wife, Penny Lancaster, with his ex-wife Rachel Hunter causing Stewart to say that "I hope she (Mone) chokes on her profits!" Great publicity for the start-up firm though! We are sure this wasn't deliberate!


A lot of flash shadow

Anyway, back to Kelly. We have to say, that Miss Brook apart, these shots look rather cheap and nasty. I'm sure there is some artistic reason for it, but it looks like they just stood her up against a wall in an office and took a few snaps using the camera's built in flash. Probably the idea is to shoot pictures that would look be like ones you might take of your wife at home, rather than some over-produced studio effort. Perhaps they are trying to portray Kelly as an average woman in these shots.






Unfortunately, Kelly looks as much like an average woman as a Bugatti Veyron looks like an average family car. So the effect is rather like seeing a Bugatti Veyron parked outside a block of flats in Hounslow.

Kelly's thigh/posterior interface still looks nice and firm


Kelly is now thirty, the poor old thing, and the question is has her face "turned the corner!"? This is the effect seen on beautiful women when they get past thirty and their faces lose some of the softness of youth, developing a rather harder, sharper look: often accentuated by the lady losing too much weight to keep looking fashionably too thin. You can see the effect on recent photographs of Claudia Schiffer. Actually, having seen Kelly on TV recently we think that she still looks good but the combination of unflattering make-up and lighting are not doing her any favours here.


At least the pictures look like they haven't been Photoshopped to death and in the picture above Kelly's body looks soft and natural; which we are sure it is!

VSS Enterprise flys above the Mojave



Well, another small step for Beardy Branson as his WhiteKnightTwo carrier (what is it about all these names where the constituent words are glued together? It's so German!) carried his SpaceShipTwo, the VSS Enterprise, to 45,000 feet over the Mojave Desert this week. This is the first time the two constituent units have flown together. At least another eighteen months of testing beckons before they risk taking one of the 330 people who between them have put down £30 million to secure a flight (interestingly, no maiden flight date has been announced yet).





In normal operation the asemblage would get up to 50,000 feet before the VSS Enterprise fires its rocket motors and launches itself into its sub-orbital flight.



I suppose the next real trick will be getting the SpaceShipTwo to seperate from the WhiteKnightTwo and land safely at the rather grandly named Mojave Air and Space Port. Agent Triple P keeps thinking about the Top Gear Space Shuttle...



Seperate! Seperate! Whoops!

Future interiors from the past 2: Kohler "Mayflower" bath.




Here we present a lovely vision of restrained 1950s eroticism from the Kohler of Kohler company of Wisconsin from 1959.
The large angle bath became popular in America in the early 1950s at a time when British homes were still languishing in a bathroom architecture originating in Victorian times. Despite the fact that similar plastic baths are still available now, fifty years later, this original example was enamelled iron.
The strength of this image, of course, is in the promise of the fit blonde just beginning the process of undressing by removing a shoe. The bath runs hot, wet and welcoming; our fifties lovely all too keen to soothe her finely wrought limbs in its warm embrace.

The promise of an erotic interlude in the bathroom brilliantly encapsulated!


Kohler Corporate HQ


The Kohler company was founded in 1873 by an immigrant to the US from Austria, John Kohler. Initially they produced industrial and agricultural iron products until 1883 when they applied enamel to an iron horse trough to create the company's first bath. Kohler itself is a company town and the company HQ remains in the town. The company is still run by the Kohler family. All is not happy for them as they have been accused of being one of the heaviest polluters in the US (which is saying a lot!) and were also in trouble in 1999 for discriminating against women (enforced by a minimun height requirement for its workers).





However, Agent Triple P does not care about this as long as they continue to run striking and sexy advertisements! Which they do!


Black and White Babe of the Week: 18 Anna Falchi

Passes the "does she look good in a white vest?" test!

No pretence at Art this week just the slutty-looking gorgeousness of Italian actress and model Anna Falchi. Agent Triple P likes a girl with big lips (I said lips!) and they don't get much bigger than Anna's!


Anna, who is 38 next month (most of these pictures were taken over ten years ago) was actually born in Finland to an Italian father and a Finnish mother; which is a fairly potent fire and ice combination!



Anna moved from Finland to Italy at the age of six where she later worked as a model after her mother sent her to modelling school in the Eighties. She got her big break in 1992 in a TV advert directed by Federico Fellini, following her appearance in the Miss Italy competition where she won the Miss Cinema award. Since then she has appeared in a string of Italian TV shows and films and is now producing her own films.



Mysterious widow Anna wafts into the cemetery in Dellamorte Dellamore



We have only seen her in one film, 1994's zombie effort Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man in the US). She first appears as a widow in a graveyard where she attracts the attention of and very quickly gets bonked on top of a grave by Rupert Everett.

Rupert doesn't quite know how to deal with Anna's bust

The poor old fruit; not sure how he coped with Anna's bust or snogging those incredible lips. Sadly Anna's character is killed by her Zombie dead husband (such being the fate of naked girls in Zombie films).


An angelic Anna (the film is visually stylish) is wasted on Rupert

This being a stranger than usual zombie film she comes back in a number of guises and characters: all of whom are, of course, gorgeous and the camera lingers on her as if she were a Renoiresque living fruit.

Anna on the beach in Dellamorte Dellamore. If one still could make Agent Triple P buy a DVD then this could be it!

Anna is a statuesue 5'10" and 36-25-36 and has the most incredible legs: it was the picture below, from an Italian magazine, that first made Agent Triple P aware of her.




But as this is supposed to be black and white babe of the week we will finish with some nice monochromes.


From her 1999 calendar


Shiny!

What every girl needs to wear in the sun


A somewhat overdressed Anna


Looking good in the pool



Splendid!


More naughty Carla Bruni pictures up for auction.


Carla Bruni upskirt


Poor old Carla Bruni, just as she is trying to keep a low profile over the "is she or isn't she bonking one of her musical collaborators on the side?" issue then yet another auction house turns up with more naughty pictures of her for sale.

However, unlike the 2008 $91,000 black and white photograph sold by Christies, Agent Triple P thinks that Helmut Newton's up the skirt photo is very fine indeed. The picture, which appeared in Vanity Fair was taken in Bruni's own home in Cavalière.

Hanson's slutty looking picture. It'll kill you you know: if the French secret service don't do it first!

One not so amazing thing is how the internet news services can't agree on even a few simple facts about this. The Daily Telegraph, who really should know better, say that both photos are by Helmut Newton and were both taken when she was 25. In fact, as Metro correctly reports, one is by Newton but the other is by Pamela Hanson. But Metro then goes on to say in it's article that the Newton one was taken in 1987 whilst the caption for the picture says 1992. Idiots! You'd think they could at least manage some consistency.

Black and White Babe of the Week: 17 Girl drinking coffee in the kitchen by Stefan de Lay

Trying to find cups that match your knickers is a trial for most women


Belgian photographer Stefan de Lay (b.1966) is an artist we expect will feature in this slot quite heavily over the coming months. Many of his photographs are a little frank for this site so we may have to put them up on Venus Observations instead.


Stefan remains a photographer of the old school and won't have anything to do with digital photography. Instead he relies on his trusty Hasselblad and makes prints on the highest quality selenium treated baryte paper.


I'm not sure whether these pictures are a deliberate series or whether he just enjoys photographing half-dressed women as if he has just found them wandering around his kitchen at breakfast time. Anyway, here is a collection of these delightful "found objects".




Agent Triple P can well understand the appeal of the slightly dishevelled woman at breakfast scenario. Make this a continental woman and, for some reason, the erotic frisson increases enormously.


It is, we think, a rite of passage to have a young lady around for breakfast following a night of passion. Triple P's initial encounters with girls never led to sleep overs: not surprising given the very narrow beds at university and fact that in living at home before that opportunities were limited to brief explorations during the day when everyone else was out (a rare occurence). Although, there is an appeal to finding a young lady in a state of deshabille on one's own premises when it is her premises the excitement is considerably heightened. Part of the enticement is that you discover the lady in question floating around the kitchen making toast or tea. Pottering about, secure in the fact that she doesn't feel the need to get completely dressed. Perhaps breakfast is just an opportunity for interim sustenance before retiring once more to a crumpled bed.

Triple P's first experience of this delightful scenario was in Rome. We had had several lunches with the lovely I, an aristocratic young lady who had been arranged as our companion for a dinner party. She was a few years younger than Triple P and impressed us at said function by crunching on a raw spring onion (they seemed to be something of a novelty in Rome), looking us stright in the eye and asking us if "we liked strong things"! It turned out that she was a very keen runner too and one day after work (it must have neen Friday as we finished at 1.00pm; Romans not bothering to work on Friday afternoons in those days) we went to the gym together (Roman Sport Centre under the Borghese Gardens: a very impressive establishment with extraordinary scenery!). After a very hot and tiring few laps running around the park that summer afternoon Triple P invited her to dinner at the Excelsior Hotel. She turned us down and instead suggested dinner, later, in her apartment. This turned out to be on the Corso Vittoria Emanuele II and was, like many Roman apartments we have experienced, a rambling space with high ceilings and an eclectic collection of old furniture: Italians spend more on their clothes than on their interior decor. This was a Friday night and she cooked, we remember spaghetti alla vongole which we had with a bottle or two of Frascati. One thing having led to another (with I very much in the driving seat-and what a lovely seat she had-all that running had worked wonders on her muscle tone) and we ended up staying up very late. When Triple P woke up (quite late- I was very enthusiastic) the next morning it was to an empty bed but clattering sounds elsewhere in the apartment. Venturing out in a state of some trepidation (the first morning after the night before is often delicate) we found I in the kitchen, wearing a white cotton tee shirt and nothing else, making hot chocolate.

Mr de Lay's images counjure up a whole cornucopia of sensory memories: the aroma of hot chocolate (one would guess that being a Belgian at least some of the cups depicted in his photographs would contain this rather than coffee), bare feet padding across black and white tiles, a shaft of morning sunlight catching the fine blonde hairs on the back of I's thighs and derriere as she bent down to extract some milk from her very fifties looking refrigerator. Above all the warmth of her skin and the unwashed, non-perfumed smell of raw girl as she sat on Triple P's lap and fed us segments of orange. Splendid!




This picture suggests a quite different scenario that we have experienced once or twice: when the young lady in question has to get off to work leaving us behind; stranded in her apartment with orders not to leave. One woman actually confiscated our clothes so we couldn't escape! Sadly, we can't remember her name but she was very tall and a nurse.




Whilst Triple P is not a fan of pregnant woman erotic photography (which the Italians, co-incidentally do seem fond of ) this picture suggests some previous night or early morning naughtiness might have preceded it.



So we like Mr de Lay's breakfast girls and will feature more of his photography another time.


Pink wine

Pink wine in Oxford Street today


There are some who mock Agent Triple P's fondness for pink wine (we don't approve of the Frenchified term rosé; especially as much of the pink wine we drink is not French). We are, we admit, entranced by the colour of it in the glass (we had a very pale pink Pinot Grigio rosato today) and also confess that a lot of its appeal is that we are quite often drinking it in the company of a young lady.

We were wandering through the slighltly pretentiously named The John Lewis foodhall from Waitrose this afternoon when we came across their really rather good wine section (we were most tempted by a magnum of Chateau Palmer). It struck us what a wide selection of pink wine they had in stock. It wasn't that long ago in Britain that you were limited to Mateus, Rosé d'Anjou or possibly a pink Lambrusco. None of them exactly the height of drinking sophistication. Pink wine was, at that time, for girls who didn't like wine but wanted to drink (alcopops had yet to be invented). We have to admit that we have taken advantage of this many times and must have poured gallons of the stuff down increasingly eager and relaxed female throats over the last three decades or so.

Agent Triple P cannot claim, however, that he has drunk pink wine consistently over the years. It has been, until the last fifteen years or so, a rather stop start passion. Rather worryingly we realise that we have been drinking wine now for over forty-eight years (we did start at eighteen months old, admittedly) and although we had wine every week with Sunday lunch when we were a child we don't recall that much pink. Agent Triple P's father preferred Burgundy or red Rhones.



Montreuil Bellay: Pink Central


When we went to Oxford we still didn't drink that much and actually used to buy wine in half bottles from Sainsburys for 99p. They had all three colours and we discovered that our particular friend at the time C preferred pink so this tended to be the one we chose. However, only a few years later Triple P, Agent DVD, Lady R and VA were travelling through the Loire polishing off huge quantities of pink: Rosé d'Anjou, pink sparkling Saumur and anything else we could find. The epicentre of this deluge of pinkness being found in the charming town of Montreuil Bellay where we discoverd the source of Sainsbury's pink Anjou of the time.
The mid-eighties saw us involved with the very girlie SA who liked pink wine a great deal and we used to get through quite a lot of it whilst Triple P made her strike poses on the floor so that we could produce charcoal pictures of her dressedin just a pair of hold up stockings. It was all a bit Bohemian we suppose.

Where Marlows used to be

In the late eighties and nineties HMS, Agent DVD and Agent Triple P used to regularly visit Marlow's wine bar in Lloyd's Avenue in the City. Sadly, Marlowe's disappeared in 1998 when the owners of the building, law firm Holman Fenwick and Willan, turned it into offices. But it was there that Triple P started drinking pink wine again; largely Beringer's White Zinfandel.



For a time after that our consumption of pink was largely limited to what is still our favourite Champagne, Laurent Perrier Rosé Brut. It was only with the appearance of our Canadian friend S that we started to drink much more pink; it being her favourite. In fact we enjoyed a good few bottles of Bandol in the Inter-Continental hotel in Montreal last October to celebrate our fifteen year "anniversary".



Bandol in the trendy see through wine store in the Inter-Continental, Montreal


The problem is, of course, that until recently, drinking pink wine in public was only acceptable if you were with a woman and definitely not if you were out and about with another chap. Oh, the number of times that Triple P was harangued and berated by Agent DVD when he ordered pink wine in the Archduke. Agent DVD prefers his wine red and preferably with the remnants of trees in the bottom of the bottle (Chateau Musar, being his model for this). Although the colour remains somewhat problematic the new wave of pink wines are more likely to be bone dry rather than as sweet as an Anjou so at least they don't taste girlie.

The most recent figures show that only about 9% of the world's wine is pink. Of this 29% is produced in France with the vast majority of this originating in Provence. In the UK consumption of pink wine is expected to rise by 50% over the next three years compared with only 10% in the US. It can't all be down to Triple P and his circle of girlies, surely?

Ah well, we picked up a bottle of Cono Sur Carmenere from Chile today, as it was on offer. Strangely, we also received our Sustrans cycling newsletter today where they were highlighting none other than Cono Sur as a particularly sustainable and cyling friendly winery. Coincidence? Or fate?


Given the bottle is lying at our feet as we type we feel we should chill it and see what it's like! Sadly we don't have a Canadian girl to hand to pour it over, but that is another story!

Black and White babe of the week: 16 In the Sea

Sea nymph



Another anonymous photo which is one of Triple P's favourites. We're not sure why we like it so much: certainly the wet hair, the position of the arms and the very toned tummy have something to do with it. Or maybe its because it looks like she's widdling in the sea! Again, we don't know the photographer or the model but think that it originally came from Max magazine (in which case she could very well be widdling in the sea!).


Kylie on Mexican Max



Max was originally a German pop culture magazine, based in Hamburg, and ran monthly from 1981 until 2008. It concentrated on cityguide, popkultur, style, erotik und kreativ. All rather Triple P, really (except the style bit-that's for girls). There were other editions for Italy, France, Greece, Bulgaria and Mexico. It also used to give away an excellent, large girlie calendar with its December issue featuring pictures of the likes of Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigova, Monica Bellucci and Maria Grazia Cucinotta (the impossibly busty (39D-25-36) girl from one of Agent DVD's favourites films Il Postino (1994)). Like many magazines it has had to go online only now, sadly, but still concentrates on its key themes.



Greek Max: rather Playboy like



They had a fixation for supermodels and, in fact, I think, this picture could have been from a supermodel (or top model as the continentals call them) supplement in the mid nineties.

Helena Christensen; the black and white cover photographs were typical


Likewise they had a thing for Hollywood actresses (in a way that is now common but was less so then) and they managed to get them to take their clothes off in a way that other magazines often couldn't.

The divine Gillian Anderson for French Max


Being German they occasionally ran quite naughty pictures but they were usually in black and white so counted as Art, of course.