Play With Words

Now we have a gentleman wanting to know why his long-suffering (one presumes) lady friend finds his golfing outfit amusing. I shall speak slowly and use words with no more than two syllables, Bruce: because it’s a golfing outfit. Golfing. Outfit – two words that should never go together, like “Madonna’s guru” or “strawberry condoms”.

The first problem is your belief that you need an outfit at all. Why? Most sporting uniforms are there for protection or easy identification of fellow teammates should a scrum occur.

Neither of these considerations is generally necessary when it comes to golfing, save, perhaps, for the odd, stray flying ball. Yet as Confucius say, pastel trousers do not head-protection make. So what is the appeal of pastel trousers and striped shirts, worn from Miami Beach to St Andrews? People only wear uniforms by choice to be identified as part of a group. Now, while there is nothing wrong with advertising your penchant for a seven-iron (or whatever), this particular ensemble is anachronistic and therefore associated with some of golf’s less appealing history, such as overpriced G&Ts and movies starring Kevin Costner. You know all the hoo-hah about Tiger Woods making the sport “modern”? Well, look at what he’s wearing, sunny Jim. Not pastel trousers. Coincidence? No sirree.

But there’s no need to get to psychological about this because, really, the problem is an aesthetic one. Think of those 1950s adverts for something called “gentleman’s slacks” in which a man bearing a strong resemblance to Richard Madeley poses with a smile – and often next to a window through which you can see some larking children and a woman bearing a smile so demented she appears to be high. The man is wearing a V-neck jumper of some sort and trousers of a fertility-affecting, high-waisted cut. They generally have a sharp crease ironed in them for, one can only presume, Masonic purposes. You sometimes see these adverts revived for satirical intentions in magazines (or, if you’re a reader of the Daily Telegraph on weekends, on the newspaper’s very own pages). Anyway Bruce, that’s you, that is. You hear that sound in the background? That’s me and your girlfriend, cackling as one.

Are Lynx and other such deodorants a good idea, or do they make us smell like 17-year-olds who are trying too hard?
Christopher (17), by email

Oh, my sweet, sweet boy. Come here and, as the great Tony Mortimer put it in the seminal East 17 song, Deep, rest upon my chest. What a mental torment you’ve been enduring, so just listen to my soothing words: yes – such deodorants do make you smell like an idiot. There, there.

I just don’t get it, I really don’t. Yes, I grasp the idea that gaggingly scented bodysprays and deodorants serve as a pubescent induction into the world of perfume, but whereas most women give up the Impulse by the age of, um, 15, men cling on to Lynx for an overpoweringly long time.

But the real problem with Lynx is not so much the smell or the long-term dependency, it’s the proof that you have been taken in by one of the most bafflingly successful advertising campaigns of the modern age. The frankly laughable suggestion that making one’s entire body and the 50 yard radius around it smell of something called Lynx Touch will make the ladies faint with desire as opposed to projectile vomit has become sweetly, implausibly and distressingly engrained in today’s male psyche. And then there’s that one in which the man is made of chocolate, like some nightmarish combined image from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Heavenly Creatures – what the hell is THAT about? Is that an aspirational image?

Christopher, listen to me. Imagine a life, a lonely life, in which you stay in every Saturday night, playing alone on your Playstation while your flatmate is out on a date with his lovely girlfriend, leaving you to wonder why every woman you encounter sub-consciously sees you as a greasy-haired, crusty-skinned loutish fool, even if actually you’re a lovely, handsome, smart and caring kinda guy.

Now that’s what I call the Lynx effect.