Dear Helena Frith Powell
Wonderful piece in Thursday’s Mail on the pomposity of ladies who object to
an innocent pinch of le derriere.
I’m what you might describe as an older man, but still have hair, most of my own teeth and am told very occasionally that I don’t look my age. I wonder if you think I might be considered one of your followers, so that, at a time and place to be agreed, I might apply a subtle tweak.
Yours sincerely
Neil Coppendale
This charming reader added his phone number to his letter, which of course I won’t be sharing with the rest of you.
Nice letters like this make me as happy as nasty ones make me miserable. But as my friend Jonathan says when I get a really nasty one “mail like this is a sign of success. It shows you can evoke passion in the very stupid”.
Mail like the above is a sign that there are still people in England with a good sense of humour (unlike the lady who had her bottom pinched).
Richard & Judy just called and I may be on tomorrow’s show to talk about bottom pinching. How will they introduce me I wonder? “Bottom pinching expert Helena Frith Powell”? So another upside to my article is that I get to cruise around in a chauffeur-driven car for an afternoon, have my own dressing room and feel like a celeb for three minutes.
If I ever meet the man who carried out the daring deed that caused all this (see today’s article) then remind me to pinch his bottom as a thank you.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007
I watched the crime taking place on the news and must admit it made my day: he pinched her bottom! Just like that! In front of the cameras! You must give her a point for keeping her composure though. At lease in front of the camera. However, in my experience, it matters rather a lot WHO it is that is doing the pinching.
In 70 odd years, and I mean odd, I have never pinched anyones bottom. I can’t quite understand why the news woman felt humiliated. What if it had been a female who tweaked the behind of a male newsreader? I suspect all would have found it quite amusing, and the male newsreader would not have called in the Police for fear of being laughed to scorn if nothing else. Arthur.
Where’s today’s article… I can’t find it.
Richard and Judy was interesting. I wish that Lowri could have been quiet enough to hear you and other people speak. I work within the criminal justice system and personally I wouldn’t have sanctioned any criminal action simply for pinching a bottom on the journalist in Oxford as he didn’t have a sexual motivation. I suspect that that would have been the view of most of my colleagues (although the official line maybe different). Then again, if a woman turns around and slaps the “culprit”, I wouldn’t have prosecuted for that either.
PS I like your highlights and cool glasses.
Hello Wendy
If you click on the pink Thursday’s Mail link at the beginning of the letter you’ll see it.
Hx
Dear Helena.
With thousands of eminently forgettable “investigative” journalists scribbling away in small town news rooms, I suppose one has to do something to get noticed.
This is so obviously a set-up and will now be shown ad- nauseam on those programs with suspicious home-made videos of baby putting a bowl of spaghetti on his head and dad falling off a kiddies tricycle.
Graham
Seen this today?
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article2186880.ece
Am off to Ile de Re tomorrow (free hols as granny’s got gites there…) and the whole place is full of over-designered people wearing stripes as though they’ve all got off their boats… it’s one of the best places to people watch…
Wendy
PS see my blog here: http://www.frenchhelpservices.com/blog