Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

You're driving through isolated country when you get a puncture. You replace the wheel with the spare and carry on. Around the next bend, a dilapidated old garage reveals itself. You decide to have the damaged tyre fixed. The grumpy old guy who runs the place is willing to do it, for a price, of course. As you look around his dingy workplace you spot the calendar. It can't be, but it is, for there's the beautiful image of Sonny Freeman, wife of photographer Robert Freeman, hand on her right breast and standing on a beach in Majorca. Pulling yourself together, and getting your heartbeat under control, you casually offer a nominal sum for that 40-year-old collection of 12 nude photos. As you speed off, the calendar on the passenger seat, you know that a fortune awaits you.

The Pirelli calendar is 40 years old this year. Only 6,000 copies of the 2005 edition will be sent out. Six go to unnamed recipients in Buckingham Palace, by the way. Since the first one appeared in 1964, there's been a debate about whether it's filth, smut, porn, tasteful erotica or high art. It's an irrelevant debate, really, because the best photographers and the most beautiful women in the world are queuing up to appear on the Pirelli pages. It's an endorsement of beauty and creativity whether you're standing behind or in front of the lens and such a credit looks very good on a resume, as one is immediately part of a very exclusive club. Our favourites include the stunning view of Naomi Campbell's back as seen by Richard Avedon that announced July 1995. Then there was Bruce Weber's April 1998 with his subject suggestively snaking a string of spaghetti down her throat as she tended to the cooking in a tiny little chequered apron. It was April all year that year for lots of people.

The marketing department that came up with the Michelin Man was certainly inspired, but the one that came up with the Pirelli calendar knew a bit more about art, as that unforgettable image of black tyre marks across a row of taut backsides showed. Vrooom! Vrooom!