WELL, it's a long way from Granny's advice to "Keep your hand on your ha'penny.

" Student Rosie Reid, 18, (below) has put her virginity up for sale on the Internet. Until eBay withdrew the auction, bids had reached £10,000 -which is certainly better than Rosie is earning as a part time waitress. And a lot more than Granny's ha'penny.

And which also might demonstrate the rarity value of 18-year-old virgins.

Certainly, it sometimes seems that today's young girls seem to go straight from bedtime stories to the morning after pill with barely time to adjust their lurex thongs.

But it might all be changing.

In America, abstinence programmes are the new big thing. The Silver Ring Thing is a scheme, backed by hundreds of thousands of government dollars, in which teenagers vow to remain sexually pure until marriage. As a sign of their commitment, they hand over $12 for a bible and a silver ring, which they wear to show the world their intentions - and presumably doom would-be boyfriends to disappointment.

Many of the abstinence organisations in the USA are run by churches, with a strong moral basis. Some are backed by people concerned about the human fallout from youthful promiscuity, others from the sheer practical concerns of the cost to the state of dealing with unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases.

There used to be a Jewish joke of a mother sending her daughter out into the snow. "Leave this house and don't come back till you're a virgin!" said the caption.

But can we turn the clock back? Our society is so sexualised that we hardly notice any more. We might tut tut over mothers barely out of primary school but hardly notice when ten-year-olds are dressed like hookers. Getting back to more innocent days - even if we wanted to - would be an impossible task.

But who knows? There might be another motive. The Silver Ring Thing has its own theme tune. "Don't give it away..." it goes.

So that's the reason. Don't give it way, but sell it instead - maybe for £10,000.

Where morality fails, market forces might just succeed.

THE Millennium Dome has already cost us £30m. Even when it's empty the bills are mounting up and the best estimate is that it will eventually have cost us £70m.

£70m - that's the equivalent of an awful lot of £3,000 top up fees.

SO farewell then Pebble Mill. The BBC is moving out of its buildings in the suburbs of Birmingham for somewhere more swish and central. Years ago, I worked in Pebble Mill, in an office between The Archers and the immigrant programmes. It was in the early days of Pebble Mill at One - the lunchtime chat show that went out live from the reception area.

Which meant that at least once a week, I would have to go down to reception while the programme was on, so my mum - sitting at home in Redcar with her cup of tea and a sandwich - could see me on telly.

INSURANCE companies are planning to use lie detectors to catch out those making false claims. If only we'd had them to use on the insurance salesmen when they were selling us endowments.

TWO Golden Globes for The Office - brilliant, but amazing. Nephew in Florida is a great Office fan, watches it on a cable channel and had his sister fly out videos of the second series as soon as they were on air. But it's a solitary pleasure. Much as he tries to persuade them, his American friends don't get it at all and are totally baffled by the whole thing and just can't see what's funny.

So it's a bit of a shock to find Slough's finest getting the Hollywood glamour treatment. But I still can't watch it - so real , it's painful.

www.thisithenortheast.co.uk

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Published: ??/??/2003