UNLESS you've been living in a monastery these passed months you'll know exactly what this is about: working class men - a group of unemployed Sheffield steelworkers to be precise - getting their kit off.

However, this is not just an excuse to show working class men prancing around with their dangly bits in full swing. In fact, The Full Monty makes a surprisingly wholesome movie with a welcome blend of laugh-out loud humour and pathos.

The story follows likely lad Gaz (Robert Carlyle), who is unemployed, divorced and unable to support his son.

When bronzed musclemen the Chesterfields come to the local men's working club he is amazed that their striptease act is a sell out. Believing that he and his motley bunch of Job Club friends could do better than "those poofs", he sets about putting a team together.

In a place where the only other employment option seems to be as an under-paid superstore security guard, the prospect does not seem so unattractive. Redundancy has created a gnawing sense of uselessness and desperation. Baring all becomes more than just about making some quick cash. In what is a nice reversal of traditional values, it also becomes about reasserting their dignity and masculinity.

"Monty", as it is now affectionately known, is also a heart-warming film about friendship and bonding - be it between child and father, husband and wife or ex-foreman and ex-worker. Much of the humour comes through in the interactions between between the group of men, and the escapades they get into as they try to shape-up for their strip debut - like the audition sequence and being caught on police video during rehearsal.

Despite the raucous subject matter there is a tragic undercurrent. This is afterall depressed Anywhere-Up-North, where poverty, crime and even suicide are facts of life. You may be laughing like a drain, but the humour has an edge.

That this comic tension works so well is down to a fine cast and debut director Peter Cattaneo's safe but subtle narrative method. For example, you never see the full monty - just occasional bare-faced cheek - but the expressions on onlookers' faces say it all.

The Full Monty has been critically acclaimed and garnered several awards. But perhaps the biggest compliment paid to it has been in the copy-cat shows that have appeared in pubs and working mens' clubs across Britain.

I went with my mum and her friend. They loved it. Immediately afterwards they were plotting to enrol their husbands in a Monty-style striptease. It has that affect on people.