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From The Times
November 10, 2006

A revolution started by housewives from the WI

By Tom Whipple
It all used to be so simple. There were calendars for teenage girls’ bedrooms, for all-male workplaces and the rest of us looked at Scottish lochs and mountains.

Then came the 1999 Women’s Institute version, with its naked housewives and their strategically placed flowers. Selling 300,000 copies and spawning a film, it opened the market to calendars of just about anyone, so long as they were naked and doing it for charity. Naked farmers, naked policemen, naked pensioners, and naked councillors all followed.

Next year, the crop on offer includes everything from Nuns Having Fun to Extraordinary Chickens. The Vatican produces its Calendario Romano, with shots of aesthetically pleasing priests saying Mass.

But charity calendars are the real success story. Paul’s Place, a Bristol disabled charity, announced its offering for 2007. Its subjects were naked “to challenge views of disabled people.”

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