YOU can't rely on anything these days - not even inanimate objects like clothes.

Take the sad case of poor Jemma Gunning, from Somerset. There she was, enjoying a nice relaxing holiday in Greece, taking part in Miss Bottom 2003, (aka "the Eurovision Thong Contest"), when, all of a sudden, and before she could do a blinking thing about it, not only was she nearly bottomless but topless too!

Jemma, 18, said her bikini top simply dropped off during her night out at the Bedrock Bar in Faliraki, Rhodes. Now what are the chances of that happening? But it gets worse, because a couple of little stickers, (which she'd wisely placed on her bosoms beneath the obviously faulty bikini top), only went and fell off as well!

Poor Jemma. Through absolutely no fault of her own, her dream break had turned into a nightmare, and she faced eight months in prison - all because her clothes were defective.

She admits she'd had a drink or two before she ended up in front of loads of leering onlookers in nothing more than a gold sparkly thong - but that's surely beside the point. Because the papers also featured a lovely picture from two years ago, on her last day at school, when, presumably, she was stone cold sober, and - wouldn't you just know it! - her shirt fell open! What bad luck.

But it's not just Jemma who suffers from ADD (attire deficit disorder). Another unfortunate British teenager - Steve Ireland, 19, from Essex - was also handed a prison sentence in Greece last week after his trousers failed and left him bare-buttocked in a very public situation.

The Greek authorities aren't the cold-hearted cads they may seem, however. Red-cheeked Steve was able to buy off his one-year sentence for £2,250, just as Jemma played her £1,675 "get out of jail" card.

In this country, though, we're even more understanding - especially at weekends when our town centres are swarming late at night with young people exposing many and varied formerly private parts, and no one could care less.

But it's different during the day when we older ones are out and about, in our sensible outfits - so three cheers to Tesco, who asked bank manager's wife Elizabeth Webster to leave their store in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, because she was wearing only a bikini top and shorts.

"I've never been so embarrassed in my life," moaned Mrs Webster. Understandable, you might say, but just think how much more embarrassed she would have been had her top fallen off as she was bending over the frozen food cabinet. Ouch!