Willy Trolove: Where itsy bitsy teeny weeny has a whole new meaning

HUMOUR

So here I am at Copacabana, Rio De Janeiro's famous beach, with its famous sand and its famous bodies and its famously small swimsuits. And, like every tourist, I want to take some photos.

But Copacabana is also famous for its crime. This beach is so full of pickpockets, muggers and gangs that my guidebook is not just concerned for my safety, it is worried sick.

It lectures me on crime-avoidance strategies and what to do when kidnapped and dispenses a healthy dose of abject terror.

It orders me not to take anything to the beach that I don't want stolen, and that includes my camera.

I don't want to be mugged, and my girlfriend would kill me if I got abducted, but I really want to take some photos. So I have only one option: I must blend in.

Blending in isn't easy. The locals, you see, have bodies. Not just any old bodies but bodies that the sun has dipped in dark chocolate and beach volleyball has honed to sand-dusted perfection, bodies that have been maneuvered into swimsuits as generous as a piece of binder-twine.

Now New Zealand men, as a rule, do not favour small swimsuits. We favour togs. Togs are great baggy things made out of recycled tents. Togs have a drag co-efficient of infinity. Togs perform the vital task of allowing a bloke to walk along a beach while revealing as little as possible about the general shape of his (ahem) personal effects.

Nobody in Copacabana is wearing togs. Standing beside the beach, watching all those bodies, watching everything that's on display, watching all these absurdly small swimsuits, one thing is clear - if I want to blend in, I'm going to have to wear what everyone else is wearing.

Across the road from the beach a kindly old lady is selling a selection of the locally-favoured jobbies. They are colourful and cheap and tiny. I ask her to choose one that will fit me. She holds up 3 1/2 square centimetres of swimsuit fabric and says: "Aha. Grande."

I gulp.

I'm embarrassed just buying the thing, but I make my way to a changing room and put it on. At first I think I've got it on the wrong way round.

It is excruciatingly tight and causes general unrest among my (ahem) personal effects. But when I try it on the other way around the unrest is worse. And I lose feeling in my legs.

I turn the swimsuit back the way it was, suck air and stride out onto the wide expanse of sand and sunbathers, camera in hand, trying to look natural.

Picture me if you can, a dazzling vision of whiteness in a little blue swimsuit, a pale phantom scything through ranks of bronzed Brazilian beachgoers.

Suddenly my fear of violence is overpowered by something worse. Strutting along the beach in an absurdly small and uncomfortable swimsuit, I grow completely and irrationally afraid - of being recognised.

This beach is the last place in the world where I'd know anyone, but paranoia does not respect geography. Adrenalin floods my arteries. My heart thumps staccato. My brow swamps with sweat. Copacabana is thick with thieves and thugs and all I can think is "what if I run into someone I know?"

I imagine a distant cousin or a forgotten friend strolling up and saying" "Well, blow me down, if it's not Willy Trolove wearing an absurdly small and uncomfortable swimsuit. This is the last place in the world I'd expect to see you. Hey, I can discern the general shape of your (ahem) personal effects. I've never seen anything so silly in all my life. Wait til I tell everyone you know about this."

Soon the paranoia is unbearable and I long to be released from this torment. Mug me, kidnap me, bury me in the sand or drown me in the surf. I don't care. Just give me an excuse to get out of this ridiculous swimsuit.

The thugs do not oblige. It's obvious that I'm not a local - I'm showing bits of skin that have never seen the sun, I'm as comfortable in this thing as a rodeo bull with a cowboy on its back - but the muggers take one look and think, "This pasty white man is mad enough to believe he can blend in by wearing a small swimsuit. He's clearly unstable. No way am I going to mug him. God knows what he might do".

So I walk the length of Copacabana Beach. I don't get mugged, I get my photos and I get out of there. I also get a buttock rash and - for the very first time - sunburn in the near vicinity of my (ahem) personal effects.