This picture is reminiscent of the outfitters’ shop windows I recall from my 1950s boyhood. One had a ditch of curved glass at its base, with mirrored walls at either end which gave all those peering in a parade of facial images stretched out, in Macbeth’s words, to “th’ crack of doom”.

The adjacent doorway was set back from the glass, thereby permitting, when an arm and a leg were stretched out before it, an imitation of the star jump position achieved in a similar setting by comedian Harry Worth at the start of his television show, Here’s Harry. This greatly amused viewers at a time when we, as a nation, were easy to amuse.

Another source of delight in those pre-permissive times was the mention, or sight, of underwear.

If sight, it was earnestly hoped in the case of women to be of a well-stocked bra or a pair of over-large bloomers bulging into view on a saucy Donald McGill postcard.

As for men, few things were considered more laughter-provoking than the hapless Brian Rix running around trouserless in the latest Whitehall farce (a phrase which in those days meant something quite different from today). The comic capacity of underwear is one of the very few aspects of the subject missing from an excellent new exhibition that recently opened in London. This is the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear.

The omission is the more surprising since the comic capacity has not entirely faded. Friends and colleagues reacted with joshing levity when I announced I was off to see the show. Perhaps they felt obliged to, giving the expected response, as when people affect to take in interest in, say, football.

The show, which continues until March, is the latest in a series of blockbusters at the V&A that began with the David Bowie exhibition, continued with another devoted to the genius of Alexander McQueen (this broke attendance records at the venue) and finally gave us Shoes: Pleasure and Pain.

The exhibition explores the relationship between underwear and fashion, notions of the ideal body, and the ways that cut, fit, fabric and decoration can reveal issues of gender sex and morality.

On display are corsets, crinolines, boxer shorts, bras, hosiery, lingerie and nightwear, alongside fashion plates, photographs, advertisements and display figures.

One case devoted to men’s underwear naturally includes an artefact associated with one of the most famous names in 21st-century pants, David Beckham, in the packaging for his H&M trunks.

Elsewhere we are reminded of a clothes icon of earlier times, George Bernard Shaw, who became unofficial ambassador for Jaeger through his admiration for its wool products. The earliest item on show, dating from the mid-18th century, is a rare pair of whalebone stays that were found in a dilapidated cottage in Whitby.

The exhibition’s curator, the V&A’s curator of textiles and fashion, Edwina Ehrman, was being interviewed by a television crew beside me while I looked at it during the press launch, pointing out how you could still see the discolouration to the material caused by the sweat of its wearer. The observation made me look, slightly nervously, at other items on view, fearful lest I might observe what used to be described in a detergent advertisement – was it for Ariel? – as “the understains”.

This would have seemed slightly out of order when one considers some of the celebrity garments on view, including a pair of long cotton drawers worn by Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent.

Mention of Victoria reminds me of the plaster fig leaf on view which was designed to spare her blushed when confronted by the museum’s statue of Michelangelo’s David which had been given to the monarch in 1857 by the Duke of Tuscany. The story goes that on her first encounter with the cast at the museum, the queen was so shocked by the nudity that a proportionally accurate fig leaf was commissioned. It was then kept in readiness for any royal visits, when it was hung on the figure using two strategically placed hooks.

A restrictive 1890s whalebone and cotton corset with a waist under 19 inches, is shown alongside x-rays and illustrations revealing the dramatic impact on the body of wearing such a garment.

Goodness knows what disasters befell the innards of corset-mad Ethel Granger who, when I knew her in the early 1970s, had the smallest waist in the world at 13in.

The record remains in the Guinness Book of Records.

But this is perhaps a story for another day.