For the past few years the Women's Institute movement has been working steadily to shift its image away from jam-making and bring-and-buy sales and turn itself into a force more relevant to the 1990s. However, it is unlikely that any single event will have done as much to change public perception of the organisation as the publication of a new "glamour" charity calendar featuring a group of Dales women.

News that these WI members had agreed to disrobe for a series of photographs will have raised many an eyebrow. There might even have been the occasional mutter about "What is the world coming to?" when respectable housewives, teachers and businesswomen, mostly middle-aged, are prepared to pose with little more than a strategically-placed kitchen utensil to cover their modesty.

This calendar, though, is intended to offend no-one. The WI headquarters approves of it and considers it to be "very tastefully done". And a spokesman for the Leukaemia Research Fund says that it "has been done in a most proper manner and I don't expect anybody to be offended."

The calendar grew out of a joke between WI members and Yorkshire Dales National Park officer John Baker, to encourage him in his battle against cancer. As a reward for his courage, the women said, they would disrobe for the camera.

Sadly, Mr Baker failed in his fight against the disease. But his friends went ahead with their promise. As a result, the Leukaemia Research Fund will be thousands of pounds better off - and the world will never again be able to regard the WI as a fuddy-duddy organisation of knitters and jam-makers.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.