AS SKIRTS got shorter and shorter, I suppose it was only a matter of time before somebody spotted the trend and screamed: “Guess what, the mini’s back!”

But back for whom? As with anything in life, you can get away with it if you are young or good-looking enough.

Apparently one of the mini-dressing fashion leaders is Victoria Beckham, whose Californian sojourn has only increased her resemblance to an alien from the Roswell Incident.

Therefore, a mini-skirt is hardly going to make Posh “Space” woman look any less or more weird. It’s irrelevant.

Age is not the only issue. I know you can do a lot with 100 denier tights, but there are some women who shouldn’t skirmish with the mini-skirt, as they are the wrong shape.

Nigella Lawson remains an object of lust to men, yet is unimaginable in a mini.

Those of the heavy hips and the muffin-waisted category should steer well clear because the shorter the skirt, the more the horizontal emphasis.

As legs are sexy and look so lovely when revealed on the young, women who have had decent pins in their prime are lured into thinking the mini can still “do it” for them.

Even Aussie supermodel Elle Macpherson, who has had a figure to die for since time immemorial (well, about 28 years) has let past glories over-rule commonsense.

The cover girl known as “The Body”, now 46, ventured out in a mini, unaware her knees were not keeping up with her, but dropping behind.

Hah! You’re thinking (well, I am): all the beauty and expert help which a multi-millionairess can buy, and she’s still about to get mown down by time’s winged, wrinkled chariot.

Paradoxically, we can’t take refuge in the long skirt, either. Alfred Hitchcock’s brief to his designer, Edith Head, about Grace Kelly was “make her look like a Dresden china shepherdess”.

Which is great – if you looked like the young Grace Kelly. Likewise, those of us maturing nicely on a budget can’t waft around in the Laura Ashley long floaty creations that made her name in the early 70s.

What we need is more serious, properly-funded, scientific skirt research on the difference between short skirts and minis. And I’m ready to help with the practical retail data collection.

Interestingly, there are theories about hemlines rising in economic good times and lowering in depressions.

So, perhaps we should be grateful to the mini. We should be grateful for this simple sign if it’s a better indicator that we’re getting out of recession than all the droning economic experts who, in reality, know about as much as we do.

Even if it means women of a certain age, who should know better, giving us eyefuls of thighs like bags of Maris Pipers.