Beautiful Nails and Dry Martinis

Well, I'm not going to lose weight overnight - but Operation Sexy isn't about just losing weight. It's about 'getting sexy' which involves a transformation of everything about me.

And when it comes to 'sexy' somebody told me that it's all in the details.

Actually, it was a woman who told me - and she'd been drinking martinis, so she'd reached that stage of intoxication which encourages candour.

"It's all in the details," she said, and went on to criticise my shoes. They were 'brothel creeper' slip-ons (for reasons I won't explain, I call them 'Bill Shoes') and they weren't right for my suit. Or my belt. Or my wallet. Or my glasses.

From this, I determined that a three-martini limit should be put into effect and also that the big picture shouldn't stop sweating the small stuff.

So in the beginning stages of Operation sexy 2008, I looked very seriously at my 'details.'

One such 'detail' is my nails.

Now I'm a guy. Despite the nice clothes and the posh accent and the reluctance to get enthusiastic about major league sports events, I'm still your average guy at the end of the day and fingernails, to me, are about opening beer cans and clawing people's eyes out. Other than that, they're just chitinous icing on your hand-cake.

But nails say a lot about you (apparently.)

So as part of Operation Sexy, I'm going to start 'looking after' my nails.

Now this doesn't involve going for a manicure. Unfortunately, men going to get a manicure (except 'ironically') is generally seen as the first step in surrendering your heterosexuality.

So I've gone another route.

And this route involved a girl. Routes often do. This is why a common Australian term for sexual intercourse is 'root' which sounds a bit like 'route' so it probably supports my argument.

I was in the mall and this stunningly beautiful girl tried to grab my attention.

Now I'm quite aware that stunningly beautiful girls don't try to grab my attention for anything other than financial benefit. I'm pale and chubby and my hair looks like I've just stuck my fingers in a 110v socket.

But because of her slim figure, long black hair, chocolate brown eyes and olive complexion I wavered for a second and that was all that she needed to grab my hand and start 'massaging it' or something.

Actually, she was doing something to my nails. She polished them, coated them in oil and then gave me a quick hand massage that had me melting into the floor tiles. And my nails looked amazing.

She was flogging 'Etré' nail care sets, which included a 'buffing' strip, which gave fingernails an effortless gleam, a nail file, cuticle oil to treat the straggy bits of skin I always seem to get around my fingernails and the 'milk and honey' hand lotion which she'd used to knead my hand into floppy ecstasy.

After she'd worked her talented magic, my hands were so beautiful I should start doing commercials with them. So I bought the set - for my wife, of course.

But in practicing to use the set (giving my wife and mother in law nail treatments won me brownie points good into the next decade) I perfected a 'self treatment' on my nails and...

Well, what can I say?

If you ignored the podgy, pale body, the wimpy self esteem and the lack of zeros in my bank balance, I've got pretty sexy nails. Like, awesomely sexy nails.

And if my nails are sexy - sure sexy will soon follow along to the rest of me.

Etré nail kits are available from most malls (with a hand massage by a gorgeous girl thrown in for free) or you can get them online here.