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I have a new word for you. Rumauli. I think it’s pronounced to rhyme with the author of Lays of Ancient Rome. It’s a body part. If you were single in the 1990s, you will remember that the most effective pick-up line for girls under the age of 25, who had not completed a degree or equivalent course in further education, but who could put on a full face of make-up in the back of a taxi, was to say in a husky voice, “My, but you have a beautiful philtrum.” A philtrum is, as everyone knows, the dimple above your top lip. But it’s as much a wine-bar cliché as, “Have you got any Jewish in you?” And then there was the summer when Ralph Fiennes drew our attention to the V-shaped gap in the throat above the collar bone and, for a brief moment, it became a celluloid-induced erogenous zone: “I want to sip champagne from your suprasternal notch.”

Then came the brief, louche and forward moment when saying “I could make your taint quiver” might have got you a cooked breakfast — taint being the common or garden colloquialism for a perineum. As in, “t’aint one thing or the other”. I’m told that when trawling for divorcées, it’s an absolute sure-fire patella-behind- cochlea winner to whisper, “I am weak with wanting to nibble your episiotomy scar.”

There has been a desperate search for more body parts to imply anatomical sophistication and erotic exuberance. “Cor, splendid, top bollocks, love,” doesn’t do it. But perhaps the fleshy muscle at the base of the thumb might. It was said to be the great delicacy of the Aztecs. Or an elongated second toe, which the Greeks believed was a sign of wisdom and aesthetic harmony. Interesting, but not sexy.

So I give you rumauli, because it comes with a warning: don’t make eye contact and say this to anyone you’re not prepared to exchange CSI evidence with. Rumauli comes from the perfumed garden and is the name of the faint line of soft, downy hair that leads from a girl’s navel to her pubis. It was brought to the west by Richard Burton, the explorer. “He couldn’t find the source of the Nile, but he found the end of my rumauli,” as houri dancers used to giggle.

This naturally leads us to the male nipple and the eternal undergraduate debate: why do men have them? I understand the biological explanation that, for genetic economy, a foetus appears non-specific until about 14 weeks, when hormones start making it obvious whether it’s going to be soccer or shopping. And, by then, the nipples are already attached. But this really isn't satisfactory. We also develop fish’s gills and a tail, and we manage to discard them. Everything we know about natural selection screams that nothing is nothing. Everything has a job and a reason. Nobody is born with surplus material, despite what the Jews may think. There is a theory, based on one apocryphal African tribe, that men’s nipples may have been used to pacify infants when their mothers were away.

“Where’s the baby?”

“He’s sucking the dummy.”

This doesn’t convince either. Some say they have a sensual function, a secondary sexual characteristic. I’ve been asking women how they feel about men’s nipples. Most expressed no opinion one way or the other. A couple said they were positively unpleasant, particularly if unnecessarily hirsuite. One said she’d had a boyfriend who had mastopexy, a condition that gave him better tits than her, and she’d dumped him after finding him playing with them in front of the telly. A study discovered that one in five men get aroused by having their nipples manipulated. There is a technical scientific term for these chaps — queer. Bloke Bristol-fiddling is a gay deal. They have whole web pages devoted to them. I reckon nipple sensitivity is a far more accurate indication that you have been “poked” by Dorothy than some brain scan, and would explain the evolutionary purpose of mipples. They are gay compensation for never getting to go round World of Leather, play golf or do barbecues.

All of which brings us to the Church of England, which, instead of arguing about whether vicars should be allowed to marry each other (of course they should — as they should know, the second reason for marriage is to prevent fornication), ought to be asking, did Adam have nipples? This is a riveting argument being waged in America between creationists and Darwinians. We all know that Adam didn’t have a bellybutton. But he couldn’t have had any residual breast ornaments either, because there had never been any women. Eve got the first organ stops. Darwinians contend that he must have had them, having descended from apes. Personally, I agree. But I reckon Adam had nipples because he was gay and Eve was invented so that he could have someone to moan to about the fact that the simply divine archangels didn’t fancy him. In fact, I think everyone was gay up until about 1640. Have you seen the outfits? And the hair? And the hats? Big boys’ nipples, the lot of them.

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