It takes a momentous event like rioting in Nigeria to lend some relevance to Miss World, a pageant so antique in its intent that even the Third World refuses to be its dumping ground. The 51-year-old event with its forced jollity and engineered social purpose was given a lease of life in the 1990s when India won the crown four times in seven years. But even India finds it difficult to maintain unflagging interest in a group of no doubt well-endowed women with remarkably similar views on life which appear to have been adapted from the Collected Speeches of Miss Venezuela 1980. But to attach evil to such banality is a symptom of our dumbed-down times. As is the comparison with Salman Rushdie, who even in his prettified rock 'n' roll phase cannot be compared by any stretch of the literary imagination with the hapless Isioma Daniel whose article caused a state deputy governor to call upon his community to kill her. In the farce that Miss World 2002 has become it is difficult to see what is more comic: organiser Julia Morley's appropriation of the feminist high ground from a foaming-at-the-mouth Germaine Greer or the belief in Nigeria among the more fundamental elements that the squeaky-clean contest encourages sexual promiscuity.

Equally interesting is the widespread anger in the British press about being elected the host for what it considers is an insult to its intelligence. For a nation addicted to reality shows that reveal what it's like living in the smelly pockets of others and wedded to Princess Diana's iconic status, it is a bit laughable. There is also a lesson in this for the organisers: if they wish to take obsolete First World exhibitions to a world where the modern often clashes violently with the traditional, they should be prepared to handle the collateral damage. The death of at least 175 people in Nigeria is something that Miss England Daniella Luan could not have foreseen but perhaps she could have been prevented from announcing to all her happiness and excitement. This reinforces precisely the vacuous image that pageant contestants are so keen to shake off. If Miss World must stand for something, let it steer clear of the freedom and dignity of women and stick to detailed advice on what to do when hair is damaged-apparently apply tomato juice.