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