Wasp-waisted

Last week she had opened a door by mistake on a staircase in Bayswater and a woman in a tight black waspwaisted corset, pearls lolling between two great naked breasts, stood by a cage made of gold wire the size of a fourposter bed, in which were a dozen or so brilliantly fringed and tinted birds.

He strutted down Bond Street with the best of them, decked out in his top hat, wasp-waisted coat and silk hose.

Being a devotee of the Johnny Weismuller school of Tarzaning, no wasp-waisted cartoon character can get my blood aboil.

"Housewife" recalls too strongly the wasp-waisted 1950s figure outwardly thrilling to the latest advances in domestic technology while necking tranquillisers to dull the pain of frustrated ambition.