Opinion: Rab McNeil: Bottom line – no nudes is good nudes

In public at all times, I never let my dangleberries dangle. Nor yet do I yearn to feel a stiff breeze around my Cairngorms. But it seems there are those with no such qualms, folk who traipse hither and also yon, letting it all hang out.

According to the latest intelligence, the number of folk joining British Naturism, the nudie body representing nudie bodies, has risen by 100 per cent since the coronavirus lockdown began.

With their brains boiling in the recent hot weather, normally upright ratepayers have apparently taken to stoating aboot their gardens in the scud, and have now acquired a taste for the peculiar practice.

In a discombobulating development, there’s even to be a World Naked Gardening Day on May 2. You just have to hope they’ll be careful with their secateurs when approaching folk’s sprinklers.

The new development has caused alarm among influential sectors of British society. In an editorial, the Daily Star newspaper thundered: “Blimey. What is this reserved country coming to?”

That is a good question, well put. The paper says, correctly, that naturism conjures images of old men playing tennis and volleyball, but adds that this seems set to change.

If that is indeed the case, I’d be worried about the younger, er, members. These tend to have minds of their own.

Still, live and let live and all that. Naturism has quite a venerable history by now. Its origins are usually traced to the Fellowship of the Naked Trust, founded in India in 1891 by an English civil servant attached to the British Raj. And they say no good came of the Empire.

Back in Blighty, the movement proved particularly popular with “alternative” folk, such as socialists who believed in sharing their assets, and vegetarians not averse to displaying their meat and two veg.

Despite that, naturism has long had a reputation for being cranky – it is popular in Germany, for example – and, if you would care to peruse your subscription copy of Health and Efficiency magazine, you will see that it does not attract many supermodels.

All the same, you would think it might still attract the wrong sorts, people with ulterior motives. However, these tend to be easily exposed.

To be frank, if we have more hot weather and further lockdowns, I am concerned that the British people will truly go doolally. I can picture scenes of our newly authoritarian police orifices chasing wide-eyed, wobbly-bellied, naked people down the street. Not orifices. Officers. Jeezus.

My own feeling is that naturism, as with other weird cult activities such as cycling and jogging, is all very well as long as it is practised in the privacy of one’s own home.

I, for one, have no wish ever to see naked old men pinging their dead rubbers at tennis or, worse still, asking folk to pump up their deflated volleyballs.

Never knowingly understood

POOR old John Lewis. The people’s store that got too posh can’t buy good PR at the moment.

The latest blow was the revelation that, while the chain suffered and staff lost jobs, it did the classic British thing of paying off its former managing director with nearly a million squids. Bewildered shopfloor workers, receiving record low bonuses, also learned that another top boss had been paid nearly £900,000 a year.

Of course (all together now): they’d just go abroad if they weren’t paid such ridiculous sums. Er, this news just in: No. They. Wouldn’t. Stop talking tripe.

John Lewis lost it years ago, becoming too expensive, too geared towards the waxed jacket brigade, too complacent, and too much about coffee.

Nobody even knows what its daft, dated motto “never knowingly undersold” even means any more and, when they put it through Google translate (Gibberish to English), they find that, particularly in these days of online shopping, it’s utterly meaningless anyway.

The internut is awash with folk highlighting items that can be bought much cheaper elsewhere. As with its self-consciously snooty sister, Waitrose – where your normally expected shopping of 50 quid turns out nearer 75 – in John Lewis some of the prices are eye-watering.

Last time I was there, the price tags on designer duds in the men’s clothing department made me giddy. And I’m a man renowned for self-control and sobriety.

There was a time when John Lewis represented the epitome of British civilisation. It was accessible to all, a pleasant place full of quality items, staffed by polite, contented assistants.

It can be the same again. If Boris Johnson can restore England to its former glory, then surely someone can bring back the John Lewis that we all once knew and loved.

Five things we learned this week

1 Struggling clothing chain Primark was founded in 1969. Who knew? We thought it quite new. It’s like when you listen to a band and think you’re getting down with the kids. Checking the CD cover, you find the album’s 20 years old.

2 Legendary crooner Engelbert Humperdinck, real name Arnold Dorsey, says he has mysterious healing powers, which he channels by putting his hands on folk’s nappers. You can imagine his victims singing his greatest hit: “Please release me, let go ma heid.”

3 Last year was the hottest in Europe since records began and, already, it looks like this year could be carrying on the same way – which is a fat lot of use when we’re all stuck in the hoose.

4 Scotland will always have winter, mind. Glasgow Uni researchers found that, when food’s scarce, great tits lower the temperature of their wee bills to save energy. Humans, by contrast, put the heating on in winter – and get big bills for energy.

5 It’s farming that has made us what we are: workaholics. According to US boffins at Stanford University, cultivating crops meant working long hours, and we never lost the habit, even if all we do all day is plough through reports.

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