TIM BELFORD

Bummer

Well, I may never know if I've got the perfect butt or not.

That's right, butt as in derrière, tush, heinie, you know the one.

Now, normally I wouldn't be all that concerned but I read in the paper this week that some academic wonk in Britain has come up with a mathematical formula to rate your posterior.

Why he did this isn't clear. But now that it's there you just gotta know.

David Holmes is a big-league psychologist from Manchester Metropolitan University.

I presume he's got tenure -- otherwise he probably wouldn't be allowed to spend his spare time seeking posterior perfection.

Anyway, in a manner befitting Benny Hill, the late British comedian who specialized in the kind of bits and bums humour that thrives on the island, Professor Holmes took into account what he considered all the important factors in a good caboose.

These include shape, circularity of buttocks, (stop giggling) firmness, texture of skin, vertical ratio and something called "bounce factor."

With this in mind he decided the female backside can be assessed with the formula (s+c) x (b+f)/t - v. The male butt (s+m) x (l+f)/t - o.

So far, so good. The only problem is that the article didn't specify what s or m or b or f or l for that matter stood for.

However it did list a website for further investigation.

When I tried it, and all that flashed up was a warning from the security gnomes at CBC that this site was "inaccessible at this time" which usually indicates something really smutty that the boss thinks will only distract reporters from the task at hand.

The article did point out that most females think the ideal male bum is "hairless, blemish-free, and smooth."

But that leaves the pesky "vertical ratio" bit which I mentioned earlier and probably has something to do with gravity -- the curse of all butts over thirty-five.

For the record, according to the bum-obsessed Professor Holmes, women rated Jennifer Lopez's ample attributes as ideal.

Men meanwhile picked Kylie Kinogue whose tail end, I admit, is not familiar to me.

Anyway, as I said, I'll probably never know how I fill out my jeans unless I can convince the CBC that accessing the good professor's website is all in the name of research.

I'll get back to you.