AVAILABLE TO SWAP: Nude sculpture causing bust-up in one of the country's top golf clubs. Will take any suitably attired golfer in exchange.

For years, a saucy sculpture of a woman peeling off her blouse has been kept in the all-male founders' club lounge of the East Sussex National Golf Club, near Little Horsted, Uckfield. But the golfing wives of clergymen, doctors and lawyers, who pay £1,700 a year membership, were not prepared for the sight when the committee voted to display it prominently in the clubhouse foyer. Now keen to appease the 210 women members, club executives are advertising the £25,000 bronze work in exchange for a statue of a fully-dressed male golfer. Chief executive Wyndham Heyring, 53, who was head-hunted from the exclusive Hong Kong Golf Club last year, said the nude would remain in the foyer until a suitable replacement was found. He added: "It's caused a bit of a kerfuffle. On reflection, it was a mistake on our part to reposition the statue in the way we did." The ladies complained that the work, Young Girl Removing Her Blouse, was out of keeping with the club's genteel surroundings, set among the rolling Sussex Downs in a complex boasting the 17th Century Horsted Place Hotel, a favourite retreat for the Queen and Prince Philip. Mr Heyring said: "Faced with the protests, I took the politically correct decision to spare their embarrassment by ordering the statue to be turned discreetly towards the wall. "That should have been the end of the matter, except that a large mirror fitted to the wall produced an unwelcome reflection, giving the ladies an eyeful back and front." "The not-so-much of a cover-up has led to further unrest between the ladies and male executives, who are refusing to move the 5ft high statue again until a suitable replacement is found." He added: "The feminine protests have been discreet and measured because the club's closed membership means that if they were to resign such is the club's waiting list they would wait years to rejoin." The limited edition was created by sculptor Nick Deans shortly before his death in 1991. It was bought by the club's former chief executive, Viscount Thurso, eight years ago.

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