Boob Alert.

This is a bit of a detour I know. However with award season upon us I've got a nasty feeling it might come up on the test.

In response to the New Year's Eve (NYE) sex attacks in Cologne, Germany I highlighted attitudes towards sex and nudity as key difference between Arab and European societies. This is of course a discussion that Europe has every year during the Eurovision Song Contest.

Although due to the participation of Israel they opt not to take part the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) actually includes many conservative Arab nations such as Morocco, Algeria and even Syria. If a female performer appears with her hair, shoulders or arms exposed viewers in these nations would consider it something of a scandal.

At the other extreme you have nations such as Germany, France, Italy, Sweden etc. If a female performer were to appear completely nude these nations only complaint is likely to be that it seems like a cheap gimmick.

If the US were to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest it would probably find itself closer to nations like Morocco and Algeria than nations like Germany and Italy. The US of course is actually rather prudish when it comes to sex, nudity and even bad language and swearing.

On US TV sex and nudity is of course governed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and their much ridiculed "No nipples" rule. This determines whether content is sexual or not based on whether a specific piece of anatomy - the female nipple - is featured rather than a more general assessment of the context.

A show that I've noticed that seems to take great pleasure in making a mockery of the FCC rule is "The Americans." This often features where the man flips the woman on to her knees on the bed, hikes up her skirt and pulls down her panties. He then slams himself into her pert buttocks before she passionately cries for him to stop.

The context of this type of scene is clearly sexual. However because no nipples are featured the FCC does not consider it to be sexual.

Contrast this with a show like "Orange is the New Black (OINTB)" which is set in a women's prison and is broadcast on the Internet and therefore is not bound by FCC rules. Within the prison society one of the important locations is the showers. This is because it is one of the few areas where all the prisoners are forced to congregate together and the male guards are not allowed to enter.

As a result it is in the showers that much of the scheming and the confrontations take place. In the background of these scenes it's natural that there are nude women getting in and out of showers. However the context is completely non-sexual and if anything serves to highlight how prison dehumanises people by denying them even that small amount of privacy.

However because these scenes do feature nipples the FCC determines them to be sexual meaning that OITNB cannot be broadcast on US TV.

That said if I do have any complaint with OINTB in the first season they did rather get carried away with the fact that due to being broadcast on the Internet and therefore not covered by FCC rules they could get away with gratuitous and graphic sex scenes. That did sort of give me the urge to remind them that there is also an almost endless supply of hardcore pornography on the Internet. From OINTB I was hoping for a plot. Fortunately having recently watched the second season they do seem to have got over their excitement and toned it down.

The UK has traditionally sat between the US and nations such as Germany. The UK is still quite prudish with depictions of sex and nudity being restricted to after the 9PM watershed and seemingly rationed out so a single channel could probably only get away with it once a day. However in the UK there is an acceptance that to an audience of sexually active adults it is okay to acknowledge that adults do have sex and when they do they tend not to wear many clothes.

I think one show that really highlighted the differing attitudes between the US and the UK was a 2006 UK/US co-production called "The State Within." Coming just before the widespread use of digital broadcasting and catch-up services in the UK the British version of each episode was broadcast as normal during the week. Then late at night on the weekend the American version was broadcast as a sort of catch up.

In one episode there is a sex scene. In the British version this featured an actress briefly lying on her back on a bed with her breasts and nipples expose. In the American version is was the exact same thing only the actress was very theatrically covering her nipples with her fingertips. Watching the two versions back-to-back it was quite hard not to laugh at how little difference that made.

However over the past few years I've sort of noticed that UK broadcasters are becoming more prudish and more like the US when it comes to sex, nudity and swearing. I think there might be a number of reasons for this.

The main one seems to be that the UK is trying to sell more and more programing to the US market. As a result those shows have to abide by the FCC rules. At the same time more and more US shows are being sold to the UK making British audiences more prudish almost by default.

Then of course there is the Internet. Specifically Facebook's adoption of the FCC's no nipples rule. As Facebook is used globally this again this seems to be making the FCC rules the global rules.

Also I think the Internet does discourage actors from taking on roles that involve nudity. In the days before the Internet if an actor did a nude scene it would only really be viewed in a communal setting such as a cinema or a family living room and watched within the artistic context in which it was intended. The Internet has made it incredibly easy for sex and nudity with fictional works to be used as pornography.

For example within like a day of the film "50 Shades of Grey" being released someone had edited all the sex scenes together in a montage and put it up on the Internet. Even I found that a bit creepy.

British TV's new found prudishness really came to a head in 2015 with several BBC dramas that were all billed as the most raunchy and sexually explicit shows ever broadcast on TV. However none of them had any sex or nudity in them whatsoever.

The first of these was a show called "Poldark." I didn't watch this but I gather the most sexy thing that happened is that a man cut some grass with his shirt off. Under UK broadcasting rules this is the sort of thing you can show in the middle of the day in a show aimed at children.

There was also a show called "The Scandalous Lady W." This was the telling of a true story from 18th century British high society. It centres around the marriage of Lady Seymour Worsley who rapidly discovers that her new husband - Sir Richard Worsley - is a voyeur who can only become sexually aroused by watching other people have sex. As a result he forces Lady Seymour to have sex with various different men for his pleasure.

Eventually Lady Seymour left Sir Richard and ran away with another man - Captain George Bisset. Sir Richard then sues Captain Bisset for stealing his property. As their defence Lady Seymour regales the Court with the sordid details of every sexual encounter Sir Richard forced her to engage in. This caused a huge scandal at the time with every torrid detail being reported in the press and gossipped about widely throughout the land.

Therefore the issue of sex and sexuality is central to the story and the program makers had a fantastic opportunity to say interesting things about the 18th century attitude of women as property and the way that in prudish societies these salacious stories draw huge audience. For example by far and away the most read post I've ever written was entitled "Hayley Atwell's Boobs."

Unfortunately due to the BBC's new found prudishness The Scandalous Lady W was forced to tell this story almost without mentioning sex. As a result they resorted to this strange narrative device that involved some parts of the story being told in the present time before switching to a flashback and then to flashforwards before returning to the present time.

This left the entire program feeling like an really annoying waste of time.

The one that really annoyed by though was "Life in Squares." This told the true story of what is known as the Bloomsbury Group of artists including Virginia Woolf. Knowing that one of the characters - Duncan Grant - was a gay man I decided to record the opening episode and sort of skim through it before deciding to sit down to watch it with my father. I needn't have bothered because the most explicit scene involved two shirtless men lying down on a bed together.

As I was really busy at the time it was broadcast I didn't get the chance to watch the opening episode properly before the third let alone the second episode was shown. As a result I just gave up on it.

It's against this backdrop of increased prudishness that the BBC's adaptation of "War & Peace" has caused something of a repressed stirring amongst certain British newspapers. This adaptation not only includes sexual themes and sex scenes but also nudity including female nipples.

However from the way the nudity is used you suspect that someone is playing a game. In the opening episode the nudity appears only in the background of a group scene which is almost a dream sequence used to illustrate an alcohol fuelled rampage. This is obviously easy to edit out without altering the story. However in a later episode one of the lead character's nipples appear in a dialogue scene which is much harder to edit out.

This adaptation has already been sold to the US market where it will be appear on not one but three networks. As such it does seem like the BBC is using it to trying an probe differing attitudes to sex and nudity amongst different US broadcasters.

Interestingly this adaptation of War & Peace can trace its roots back to the 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Sochi, Russia. The main theme of that ceremony was "Russia: There for hundreds of years before Communism. Still here afterwards." Supported by a number of factual documentaries on Russian history War & Peace is set towards the end of Tsarist rule and helps set the scene for the Communist revolution of 1917.

On the topic of the visual arts everybody's favourite popstar Rihanna is currently in Paris, France shooting scenes for her role in Luc Besson's upcoming movie "Valerian." Given what Paris has had to put up with recently in terms of terrorist attacks and the COP21 Summit this strikes me as unnecessarily spiteful.

However being somewhat familiar with the logistics of movie making I am inclined to give Besson the benefit of the doubt. After all this was likely put in motion long before the plan for the November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) Paris Massacres had even been conceived of.

That said though the fact that Besson is not only relying on the star power of Rihanna but also of British model/nuisance Cara Delevinge suggests that Valerian could end up being more than a little thin. I think the best we can hope for is a repeat of Besson's 1997 "The Fifth Element" which was very highly stylised if very silly.

If you have seen The Fifth Element you will of course have seen Milla Jovovich's boobs. However it's much less likely you seen some of her photographs because it turns out this former model is actually a highly accomplished photographer. If you're British the main trauma of the Jennifer Lawrence nude photos scandal was the realisation that Nicholas Hoult will never work in the visual arts ever again.

Leonardo DiCaprio has also been in Paris recently promoting "The Revenant" for which he is hotly tipped to win an Oscar. So hotly tipped in fact there is a Spanish statement that has been translated into English then into French and finally into Italian which says simply; "No the bear didn't rape him. It's a female bear called Miranda."

The fact that DiCaprio has decided to linger in Paris before travelling to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland seems to have reignited rumours that he is dating Rihanna. These rumours have largely been started by The Sun newspaper in the UK who in the past few months have claimed that Rihanna's dating everyone including Lewis Hamilton, Travis Scott and the Weeknd who will be the support act on her upcoming tour to name but a few.

Back in the days when they used to put topless women on page three the trick wasn't to believe these sort of stories in The Sun but to work out what point they were trying to make in the telling of the lie. However this particular rumour has also been picked up by the UK's Daily Mail/MailOnline newspaper who not only changed the location of the alleged liaison but claimed they had photographs of it that French privacy laws were preventing them from publishing.

This prompted France to set fire to the Ritz Hotel in Paris yesterday (19/1/16) to confirm that Rihanna and DiCaprio had indeed been in the same city at the same time.

After all that's apparently a lot easier than Rihanna simply picking up the phone or perhaps releasing an album.

17:30 on 20/1/16 (UK date).