Ain’t got nun, never had nun, don’t want nun...

This was a job I wasn't exactly looking forwards to and I couldn't even work out why they had selected me for the piece, -but such is the fickle world of magazines? I had not long completed a week at The Crazy Horse in Paris for The Observer, a club full of strippers which had also equally put the wind up me, as the prospect of a week with a convent full of nuns was now doing.

It was to be a closed order of nuns, -in other words they do not really have anything to do with the outside world, popular culture, world news etc. And had virtually no content with males, unlike the girls at The Crazy Horse, -but enough about them.

I was fearful that these women would be humourless and difficult company, and that I might accidentally swear or not know what to talk to them about. I couldn't have been more wrong. My (female) assistant and I spent a blissful week with them and talked to them about all sorts of things, spending much of the conversation laughing. There was actually nothing or no subject that was off limits or taboo to them, which came as a great surprise (not to mention relief) to your hero and humble narrator.

Was tempted to tell them the joke about the blind man (you know the one, the Mother Superior in the bath and the young nun enters to tell her the blind man is here and she tells her ‘well let him in’ -thinking that he cannot see, but he says ‘nice pair of tits luv, -now where do you want these blinds?'), -but thought better of it?

The writer who accompanied us (we had not met him prior to this), on the other hand, clearly didn't like them or get on with them and it was obvious that he would be writing a derogatory piece, which made us feel uncomfortable and conscious of how we might be portraying them, and so I did my utmost to show them in an honest and positive light as I thought they deserved it and I didn't like the writer anyway.

The nuns weren't stupid and were savvy to what a despicable nurk he was turning out to be. He was trying to trick them into saying things by asking them very loaded questions, such as 'would you read James Bond' obviously leading to then citing ever more risqué novels till he found their barriers or cut-off points, but they cleverly scuppered his dastardly plans by answering that they would read James Bond, but chose not to. Anyroad, we all gave him the bum's rush.