Between the covers... and on top

NEVER judge a book by its cover, especially if the picture shows your head on someone else's naked body trying to get a taxi in a New York street. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) didn't agree with her publishers that this proposed cover for her book "is so you". It so wasn't, she protested.

"That cover is all about sex. My columns are about relationships and when I do write about sex it's just words. Writing about sex is a lot different to seeing it in front of you naked on Sixth Avenue hailing a cab."

Sex And The City is very much all about sex. The programme takes great pleasure in women talking dirty and behaving badly. The theme of this episode was being judgmental, demonstrated in several ways you couldn't explore until well after the watershed.

Carrie made a rapid judgement when she entered Samantha's office unannounced and found her friend performing oral sex on a hunky delivery man.

"That's quite a package," was Samantha's idea of foreplay. Although she wasn't a greedy girl, telling him: "I've had quite enough" after being caught out by Carrie.

Miranda's problem was having too much - weight, that is. "I'm much lighter metric," she told the slimming group supervisor as she weighed in and had "Miranda Baby Weight" put on her label.

She bonded with "Tom Big Boned" over glazed doughnuts. He even knew how they could burn off the calories, but proved a messy eater in bed, which Miranda found off-putting.

No amount of advice from her pals ("When I was a lesbian..." began Samantha inevitably) could solve her dilemma of how to criticise a man who overate if anyone criticised him.

Carrie was still looking for a cover that would make her smart, sexy and properly airbrushed rather than a hooker. Women her age, she felt, should cover themselves up. "I don't feel comfortable being on a shelf next to a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt with my breasts hanging out," she said.

Eventually, Samantha made it up with Carrie following several days of not speaking after the delivery boy incident. Their friendship was back on, but she made it clear she wouldn't change for anyone. "I will wear what I want and blow who I want as long as I can breathe and kneel," she declared.