Cut off from the main part of the ward, with our own loo, there would be no tell-tale signs of my presence (“Who’s left the seat up?”). That way, she’d get some sleep, away from the wailing baby chorus, and I stood a better chance of staying with her. Easier, thought I, to find a bed in a convent, than to lay my head down here.But my wife was all for me staying, so we booked an amenity room – the NHS euphemism for a private bed – off the main ward for pounds 50 a night. The midwives were all women and the patients were unmistakably so, as several walked slowly by, faces pained, hands gripping the small of their backs. Apart from once when sneaking a quick pee in a powder room when the gents was full, I’d never been in such an exclusively female place.

So, why, I asked myself, should I have to miss the baby’s first night?As soon as I visited the labour ward I realised why. I’d felt the baby hiccoughing inside my wife and collected a fistful of radar-like photographs showing the baby at various stages of foetal development. We’d gone to antenatal classes together and I’d accompanied her to her various hospital appointments. After all, I’d been present for the conception, supported my wife through morning sickness, shared her bloom of pregnancy.

It seemed so unfair that I should be sent home just when the fun was starting. The alternative version was that, after a gruelling night in the labour ward, you headed home for some well-earned kip, so you were on top form next day, with balloons blown and bunting waving, to welcome mother and child back into the family home.
But neither option appealed to me I wanted to stay. “Of course,” said I, a model of New Mannery, picturing myself heroically clad in an ER-style green gown, ready to mop my wife’s brow, cut the umbilical cord and announce at the appropriate moment, Delboy-style, “It’s a baby.”

But what then? I’d been told that a new father, having done his duty, should light a fat cigar, head for the pub and “wet the baby’s head”. ‘You are going to be there for the birth, aren’t you?” asked friends as we prepared for the arrival of our first child last month. But at least Mc Queen has laid the foundations of something so strong and modern that the future of the once ailing, anachronistic world of couture now seems secure.. Hubert de Givenchy himself, now almost 70, must be watching the unseemly designer turnover and the relentless quest for publicity at the house he created with some bewilderment. For once, here is a designer who has his customers’ interests at heart, rather than his own uncompromising creative vision.While Galliano focused on Givenchy signatures, including the bows, the frothy Bettina blouse and the feminine frills, McQueen looked through the archives and focused on a much harder, linear style.

Although the show lacked some of the raw energy and drama of his own productions in London, it was all the more mature and admirable for it. At times, it could be said that there was a little too much of the “Flight of the Valkyries”, obscuring the clothes themselves.It seemed as though McQueen were reasserting the Givenchy label as one that makes luxury clothing for modern women, rather than historical costume that nobody can wear. (Unlike those at his ready-to-wear show in London last October, these butterflies were dead.) There was a gold corset encrusted with sparkling stones, and a white damask dress with voluminous sleeves, a camp homage to Maria Callas. There was a floor-length coat of pearly grey snakeskin, and a white organza cape with butterflies trapped between the layers. On Sunday, in the fine old Napoleonic interior of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, there were entire dresses and cat-suits made from feathers stitched together to form a second skin. The Greek mythology theme was evident from the start, with the waxed body of male model Marcus Schenkenberg perched on a balcony, having apparently grown a pair of magnificent, white, Icarus-type wings.The McQueen signature came through bold and bright; why else was he hired for the job? But he left his shock tactics and often violent and aggressive imagery behind in his charmless Hoxton basement studio. The gold looked brash, but then so are the women who have more money than taste, and who collect couture.