YUMMY what a tasty dish! Marketing manager Stuart White gingerly samples a succulent sample of Japanese cuisine off the latest fashion in tableware.

Naked geisha girl Kit Ying - doubling up as a piece of crockery - lies still while sushi is eaten off from her bare flesh with a pair of chopsticks.

She is then hygienically wiped down with lime juice and rock salt in preparation for the next diner.

Stuart, 33, senior accounts manager of TDM - the Bollington company which is promoting its client's Manchester restaurant by launching "nyotaimori" evenings - stressed the eastern delights night are open strictly to pre-booked parties.

"It's not an opportunity for men on a lads' night out to leer over ladies' naked bodies," he says.

"The cultural aspects of the tradition are observed and not taken out of context."

Stuart, who lives on Wellington Road in Bollington, says that although the totally new dining experience is expected to take off in Manchester his clients are not planning to bring in the geisha girls at their Wilmslow Sashi restaurant on Manchester Road.

"It's a city thing," he says. "It's too cosmopolitan for Wilmslow.

"It wouldn't be appropriate."

Meanwhile, diners wanting to treat themselves to a night of fish and strips at the town restaurant, where nyotaimori nights are being held in a customised area below stairs, must book first.

And there they will meet their dish of the day, the lovely Kit Ying, a former resident of Bollington.

Nyotaimori literally means "the adorned body of a woman".

Cold Japanese dishes are placed strategically on a girl's body.

For example ikuri - salmon roe - is served over the heart in the belief that it gives wisdom to the person who consumes it.

And mekajiki - swordfish - is placed over the stomach to aid the diner's digestion.

Judging by the wealth of dishes in store for Stuart, it looks like he'll be as fit as a fiddle for a long time to come...