Nearly made it. For a few days there, it seemed possible to brood about the human rights shambles that is Nigeria without having a lash at that old dinosaur, Miss World, writes Kathy Sheridan
All changed, alas, when after "fleeing" by chartered jet from her luxury Abuja hotel, Miss England and her bra landed in Gatwick, the white confection gleaming like a neon sign beneath a transparent black top as she wheeled her trolley towards the world's cameras.
The Daily Telegraph averted its eyes and reported snidely that Miss Chile was dressed in a floor-length red ballgown, and Miss Kazakhstan - tsk, tsk - looked as if she had taken the wrong turning to a business conference. And their own Miss? Well, she had packed for the "sunny climes of Nigeria" and with just three suitcases was four below the Miss World average. What a gal.
And though she was the main focus of 100 journalists, they all managed to dodge the hard questions. Like, just how moronic do you have to be to see a bra as appropriate outer wear for daytime, never mind for a Sussex airport in freezing November? Or, how many brain cells are required to know when a smidgen of dignity and reserve might be advisable in one's dress or demeanour?
If ever there was a time for low-key dress and low-wattage smiles, this was it. Around the time the beauty queens were boarding their plane, a little Muslim girl called Halima Mohammed was dying from a bullet through the head and a young Nigerian journalist was fleeing, genuinely in fear of her life. By the time Miss England and company had sashayed into their London press conference on Monday, 220 people had been killed, 22 churches and eight mosques destroyed, hundreds of homes torched and about 12,000 people made homeless.
Any chance of the girls looking a tad reflective, then? The same daft, dazzling smiles accompanied the trivia about the suitcases as about the "shame" of the events back in Nigeria.
For a more informed insight into the catastrophe and its origins, reporters turned to Helen Quinn, the pageant's Irish spokeswoman. "It was all because of that big-mouth journalist who should have known better," she said. Clearly a big fan of tolerance and all that stuff that Miss World stands for, particularly in the swimsuit category.
So, the best support the Miss World organisers could offer a 21-year-old journalist who had made an ill-judged hypothesis (in support of their witless cause), had her office burnt to the ground, found herself out of a job, under arrest, then forced to flee to the US under state-ordained fatwa, was to dismiss her as a "big mouth"?
If nothing else, it betrays the kind of thinking that saw nothing awry about hawking a tacky circus during the holy month of Ramadan to the northern part of a country where 12 of the 31 states are under brutal Islamic law, where four women convicted of adultery have been sentenced to death by stoning and where men and women are forbidden to use the same public transport.
With or without Miss World, there are large pockets where a small grievance can spark a murderous conflagration, and there are plenty prepared to flick a match for a myriad of political and religious ends.
The alarm bells clanged as far back as September, when the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs condemned President Obasanjo for agreeing to host the contest during Ramadan, calling it "indefensible, insensitive and provocative". There are plenty of issues for which religious extremists deserve a bloody nose; Miss World is not one of them.
In an era when the organisation markets itself by reference to the intellectual and entrepreneurial prowess of its beauty queens, you might think they could have spared a brain cell to do a little research on their destination. Nothing heavy, mind, just a quick glance perhaps at a website like Lonely Planet, with its bald warning about "lawlessness, widespread corruption and the lack of military control . . . which have allowed an almost unfettered rush of score-settling between tribes, religious groups and even rival cities. There's a real risk that the nation will burst into widespread chaos and violence at any time". And there was poor old Miss Ireland, Lynda Duffy, thinking that "it was going to be first-class all the way".
Anyone still think that importing 100, poorly-read, skimpily-dressed beauty queens to Nigeria in November was a good idea?
Yes, is the criminally stupid answer. Miss World spokeswoman, Stella Din (there seems to be no man around to pin this one on), says that she would happily stage the event in Nigeria next year.
Up to now, the whole cheesy, banal affair had become so deliciously, ironically post-modern that, like the Eurovision, it was almost cool again. Remember when our lad Ronan presented it? Hysterical. No, really, you had to see the beach babes footage . . .
This year, the rictus smiles dimmed when Miss Denmark and a handful of her peers found their breaking point and boycotted the Nigerian jaunt.
But not gritty Miss Ireland. She continues to sit amid the tinsel and the horror, claiming to represent her country in a big sash that says IRELAND. Still, it could be worse. It could be her bra.