SECRET’S OUT AND IT’S GOOD NEWS

HANG up your halo. Hand in the angel wings. And halt the starvation diet.

The Victoria’s Secret fashion show has been shelved. The lingerie brand is taking a break while it tries to work out how to sell peekaboo plug-in lingerie trains to Millennial girls who just want comfy undies and cotton singlets.

Australian model Shanina Shaik revealed this week she is sad not to be “training like an Angel”. I’ll bet she’s not sad to forgo the chance to strut down the catwalk dressed like a softporn version of Big Bird in a yellow feathered cape, bejewelled head dress and Gstring panties like she did a few years back.

I reckon the Victoria’s Secret show, which has been running since 1995, is a Playboy-style porn fest. Each year the outfits have got more ridiculous and the attentionseeking more extreme.

One model, Elsa Hosk, has said she “couldn’t believe” she was in the Victoria’s Secret show. What she means is she couldn’t believe she was asked to wear a papier-mache dragon tied around her waist, a bra and thigh-high stiletto legwarmers after nine days of company-ordered fasting.

Same goes for one of the most famous Angels of all: Heidi Klum, who once wore a Victoria’s Secret Fantasy Bra that was heavier than a washing machine and cost more than a row of houses.

As I’ve said before, the real Victoria’s Secret is the gap between the brand’s high-end bordello marketing and the low-rent lingerie in the stores.

All the Angels in the world can’t distract from the fact that Victoria’s Secret stores are full of discount G-strings sold in bins at five for $20.

Customers are mainly undergrads after a bargain and middle-aged men carrying their wives’ shopping bags and trying not to stare at the displays of high-cut Brazilian panties that cost $35.

And yet on the catwalk it’s a dazzling fantasy of Amazonian headdresses and push-up bras that turn women’s chests into a handy shelf to rest drinks on.

Over the years we’ve seen sexy leprechauns, sultry flight attendants, hot Swedish goatherds and sexy French maids. Nowadays women aren’t buying it. Literally.

The decision to stop the shows isn’t a nod to the #metoo movement or even the #saggyboobsmatter movement. It’s about economic reality.

Last year the show drew a US audience of only five million – three million fewer than a rerun of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on CBS

two hours earlier.

It’s a long way from when 12 million would watch the show in the US alone. Sales are down and stores are closing. It didn’t help that Victoria’s Secret boss Ed Razek recently said the company doesn’t hire plussized models “because the show is a fantasy”.

He’s right. The biggest fantasy is the glamour of it all. Most of the audience aren’t women like the Angels but mums and dads at home in their trackies. They’re watching the catwalk show on TV eating Tim Tams.

The company has always tried to peddle the mantra of empowerment and tell us that “confidence is sexy”. How ridiculous. All the confidence in the world doesn’t make you six-foot tall with big boobs and a size zero body.

RIP Angels. Go eat a hamburger.