I have just two words for those who argue that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Jade. And Goody.

As I write, she's on the front of the newspapers again. Don't know what it is this time. I think she's attempted to run a marathon without having done any training. But it might have something to do with the £500,000 she lost recently. Maybe she ate it.

Whatever, of all of the planet's six billion beholders, I bet you'd struggle to find a single one who, upon being shown a picture of Ms Goody, would say,"ooh, I fancy a game of hide the sausage with that".

It's much the same story with Cherie Blair. Doubtless Tony saw something there when he fell to one knee and proposed but whatever it was, it sure as hell had nothing to do with aesthetics. We're told she spent £7,000 on hairdressing in the run-up to the last general election. It didn't make any difference. What she needs is a two-foot fringe.

Beauty then, is not in the eye of the beholder. It's a universal truism that Jade Goody's a moose and a global fact that Cherie's mouth is more frightening than a wormhole in space.

Think about it. All of us prefer the look of a leopard to the look of a snake. A flower is prettier than a wolf. Stow-on-the-Wold is more pleasing to the eye than Los Angeles.

This means, therefore, that beauty isn't just random or a question of opinion. It has to be an entity which can be defined and described by science.

Certainly, there's an appeal in the overall look of a Chevrolet Corvette. You may say the Seventies Stingray, especially the version with a large eagle on the bonnet, is perhaps a little tacky but you cannot deny that like all 'Vettes, it has a definite rightness to its proportions.

I was told once, by a designer who worked on the Rolls-Royce Phantom, that if a car is to look right, it should be exactly twice as tall as the height of its wheels. I've also been told that the 'hump' in the rear wing should always be forward of the rear axle. I've been told lots of things which would indicate that in cars, beauty is certainly not in the eye of the beholder; that it is most definitely a tried and tested formula.

But then I've also been told that Japanese people look at cars in a completely different way. Here in the West, we look at the whole, whereas in the East, they see the shape as several different components, all of which have to be looked at separately.