Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland
They must be awfully cold, all the way up there on the top shelf. Half-naked. Sometimes with only another half-naked body to cling to for warmth - although the girls on the covers of lads' mags must be well heated by the mixture of embarrassment, shock, excitement and disgust rising from the customers browsing the shelves below. Because you can't browse the magazine rack any more without your eye being drawn to lovely Katie from Durham taking a shower while surrounded by pictures of fast cars and shark victims.
In fact, if lads' mags offer any insight into the mind of the modern young man, it's that he would love nothing more than to be ravaged by Abi Titmuss. In a Ferrari. While fending off a bear attack. The first political party to promise this during the next election will wrap up half a generation.
What magazines do on the inside pages is their own business. But when they've got flesh splashed all over the front page - complete with a salivating caption sure to involve the words "red", "hot" and "explode" - it's another matter. And they take up so much space on the shelves that they become impossible to avoid without becoming legally blind.
Worse, there is no longer the same degree of segregation. Nothing is more likely to wake you up on a Sunday morning, for example, than browsing through the broadsheets on the newspaper rack only to reach the end of the row and find the Sunday Sport leading with the exclusive" that Jordan showed her knickers while climbing into a car after a movie premiere. Two questions run through your mind. Must it
be accompanied by such a graphic photograph? And if it's such an exclusive, why did none of the broadsheets pick up on the story?
This used to be a country that refused to budge from its official position that women were born wearing several layers of clothing, none of which could be considered to be anything so scandalous as underwear.
Now, with so many naked women propositioning you from the shelves, popping out to the local shop for a pint of milk and a Creme Egg is like taking a stroll through Amsterdam's red-light district.
In England, Sainbsury's has started to cover up lads' mags. It is taking a warm plastic wrap and gently placing it across the women to protect their modesty. It sounds less like censorship and more like common sense. Maybe our grocery stores should try the same tactic: things must be getting bad when you'd rather bring the kids to lunch at Stringfellows than grab a sandwich for them at the local Spar.