Variety: Is this what we've been missing all these years?

Miss World, a horse of the year show with one eye on world peace, is back. No need to applaud

Miss Lebanon is studying public relations. Miss Botswana wants to be a lecturer in psychology. Since childhood, Miss United States has been focusing on becoming an attorney so she can help victims of abuse. Miss Vanuatu wants to lead the first manned flight to Venus. OK, I made that one up, but I'm not the only one.

Precious few demands were made of the participants assembled in the Seychelles for Miss World. They had to explain how much they liked the Seychelles, for whom this extravaganza was a gigantic advertisement. For extra points, they had to spot the differences between the Seychelles and their own country. They weren't noticeably marked down if they couldn't catch a frisbee. The only skill required of them was the ability to fabricate a future. That's why my vote would have gone to Miss Puerto Rico, who claimed to be writing a novel. It may in itself be a fiction, but at least it was a creative one.

The horse of the year show sashayed back on to terrestrial television for the first time in 10 years with its tongue poked reluctantly into its cheek. As a sop to modernity, Eric Morley with his estuarine vowels and bingo-hall style were brusquely ignored. It was also shot on film, so it looked less like Miss World than a movie about Miss World. And as the contestants tottered onto the stage, a cheesy school-of-Eurotrash voiceover worked hard to whip up a knowing smirk. But some relics from television's age of innocence are remarkably resistant to ironic reinterpretation. Trooping the Colour is one of them, and Miss World is another.

In its travels round the globe the contest has conformed throughout to a highly prescriptive brand of beauty. Competitors have to show evidence of loveliness within to match the loveliness without. Physical beauty is widely agreed to involve legs up to the earlobes, and never mind the stuff between the ears. But there's no internationally recognised unit of measurement for inner drop-dead gorgeousness. Miss South Africa hoped that the winner would be "mentally refreshing". How do you compute mental refreshment? It's almost as absurd as awarding prizes for literature.

The unspoken consensus among the girls seemed to be that a sullen demeanour would get you nowhere. Miss Uruguay, a student of political science, apparently went out on a limb and said that she'd happily see General Pinochet extradited to Spain, but they didn't broadcast that because it doesn't toe the Miss World organisation's line on human rights, which is that apart from washily wishing for world peace they don't have one.

Thus, in the most nauseating section of the contest, the girls had to demonstrate a gift for friendship. For their interview with little Ronan Keating the 10 finalists supplied a photo of the fellow contestant they had bonded with most meaningfully. Even this could be exploited to impress the judges. A couple nominated Miss Seychelles as their best friend, and Miss Czech Republic said she'd got on famously with Miss Slovakia. If Palestine had entered, Miss Israel would doubtless have smothered her with love, or at least claimed to. One girl may have been studying public relations, but most of them already know the ropes.

Is there a place for this on proper television? No. That's why it was on Channel 5, where it was immediately followed by the latest episode of Sex and Shopping, its exhaustive tour of porn. You didn't need to watch that to be reminded of the negation of sexuality integral to the Miss World ethos. Boyzone came on and sang, but this was a boyfreezone. Miss Holland may have been called Nerena Ruinemans like a blonde-tressed temptress in a 14th-century romantic fable, but in the bubble of plasticity that is Miss World no participating woman could get anywhere near enough to a man to ruin him. Even the stage set was on an island with the audience banished to the shore, deepening the sense of segregation between an idealised realm of beauty and what passes for reality in the Seychelles. Miss PR could write a novel about it.