IF YOU'VE ever wanted to get up close and personal to the Cerne Abbas Giant the National Trust are offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help prepare the rudest man in Dorset for a very special anniversary.

The giant - who is world famous for a very particular feature! - is celebrating 100 years since he was first handed to the National Trust in July 1920 by the Pitt Rivers family and to make sure he looks his best, he is going to get re-chalked.

Volunteers and National Trust staff will spend two weeks later this month re-chalking every centimetre of the giant to give him back his distinctive white outline and restore him to his former glory.

National Trust countryside manager Natalie Holt said it was a "once in a lifetime opportunity to be a part of the giant’s amazing history".

“We do the re-chalking once every seven to ten years, the last time was in 2008," she said.

"We have to do this every so often because it is on quite a steep cliff and the chalk gets washed away.

“It’s quite a big task and it is a massive event for us and so far we have about 170 people signed up. It’s a once in a generation kind of thing so you could come and take part and then tell people that you helped create the Cerne Abbas Giant.”

Standing at 55 metres tall and brandishing a 36.5 metre long club, the giant is Britain’s largest chalk hill figure and probably its best known, though his origins are shrouded in mystery.

Some claim he is an ancient symbol, perhaps a likeness of the Greco-Roman God Hercules, though the earliest recorded mention of the giant dates back only to the 1700s.

Another popular theory suggests he was created to mock Oliver Cromwell.

Local folklore has long held the giant to be an aid to fertility and in 2010 it was revealed that women in the surrounding towns and villages had the highest birth rates in the country.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics showed that the women of North Dorset had on average three children each – nearly double the national average and nearly three times as many as the city dwellers of Westminster.

n Families who want to help with the chalking can sign up for a two hour session on either August 29 or 31. More information at nationaltrust.org.uk/cerne-giantwww.nationaltrust.org.uk/cerne-giant