WANDERING around Britain in the summertime can set you to wondering whether the Taliban did, in fact, have something going for them.

The Taliban, you may remember, were the Afghan regime that we hated until our venom was turned on Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party.

They were Islamic fundamentalists and one of their more eccentric decrees was that every man must have a beard. And not just any old beard. The beard had to be at least the length of a clenched fist held under the chin.

The mobile beard police, part of the Taliban's Department of Virtue and Vice, drove around the country in Japanese jeeps, with powers to jump out and investigate any beard they liked. They were armed with kalashnikovs just in case a beard dispute turned nasty.

Gradually, the fist came to be seen as an out-dated method of measuring a beard's length and the beard police were given lantern glasses. These glasses were eight centimetres deep, and the beard police would demand that their suspects place their beards inside the glass. If it didn't reach the bottom of the glass, the beard was deemed illegally trimmed and the wearer was liable to punishment.

The punishment depended on the mood of the beard police. Someone clean-shaven could expect 45 days in prison; someone who had had a trim might get ten days or seven lashes.

If the beard police were feeling particularly lenient, the offender might be let off with an on-the-spot light beating with a small length of rubber hose.

All of this may sound somewhat draconian until you consider what is on display on North-East streets this summer.

This season's fashion - particularly among women - is baring a spare tyre's width of tummy flesh. It might be considered appealing when the woman in question is a lithe popstar of Antipodean origin - but unfortunately you don't see too many of those popping into Binns on High Row.

In fact in Darlington's Queen's Arcade on Tuesday, there was a most unappealing sight. It was a blubberous lady of indeterminate age dragging a young child hurriedly by the hand. You could tell the child was hers because you could see the stretch marks, and you could tell the pair of them were in a hurry because you could see that her large expanse of white tummy, swinging from side to side as she rushed, was caked in a thin film of glistening sweat.

There was more: most memorably, the top portion of a tattoo poking up above her light blue pants. Once, the tattoo might have been alluring as it lead her lover to her secret places; but now time had caught hold of it and yanked it and stretched it into an elongated contortion seen only in fairground mirrors.

And then there was the navel stud. Her red diamond sparkled amid an angry red infection which had painfully taken root in her piercing. Just the thought of the top off her trousers chaffing against the stud was enough to bring tears to the eyes of passers-by as she and her child struggled through the arcade.

If only the belly police - or the midriff constabulary or the tummy taliban - had been on hand, an on-the-spot light beating with a small length of rubber hose was the very least that she deserved.