Ignore Wallis Simpson’s health tip

It’s curious and not altogether reassuring to discover in your retirement that some of the things you told your patients for 40 years were wrong.

I would tell any fat person suffering from osteoarthritis of the hip that he or she should lose weight. I won’t go into the question of whether saying this ever had any practical effect on anyone: I rather doubt it.

But it turns out that even if the advice had been followed, it wasn’t very good, at least with regard to pain in the hip.

A study of 2,752 patients with radiologically proved osteoarthritis, of either the hip or the knee, showed that those who lost five per cent or more of their weight suffered just as much pain from their hips as those who didn’t.

Some of my honour was spared by the fact that those with osteoarthritis of the knee suffered much less pain if they lost weight. In fact, it often disappeared entirely. Not all my advice was wrong.

On the matter of losing weight, Wallis Simpson was quite wrong when she said that you could never be too thin. As for being too rich, I have no experience.

A study of weight loss in healthy people over the age of 70, with an average weight of 75kg, showed that weight loss in the elderly was not a good sign. This is not exactly news: it used to be drummed into medical students that weight loss was a sinister sign and should always be enquired into. But it seems that, with the fattening of the population, which has brought with it an ever greater and more forlorn desire for slimness, the lesson has been forgotten.

More than 16,500 healthy people over 70 – ‘healthy’ meaning with no known disease likely to cause death – were followed up for an average of four years and five months. Men who lost five per cent of their weight in the interval had a third higher chance of dying, and women a quarter higher chance. Men who lost ten per cent of their weight were nearly three times as likely to die as those whose weight held steady, while women were more than twice as likely to die.

Relative risks must always be treated with caution because a high relative risk is perfectly compatible with a low or trivial absolute risk.

But, in this instance, it is not so: the risk of dying after the age of 75 is not trivial, and a two- or three-times-greater risk is not to be disregarded. Of each 100 men of those who lost ten per cent or more of their weight, 30 died within four years and five months.

So far, so clear: but, as usual, the message is slightly less clear than it appears at first sight to be. There is no distinction in the figures between those who lost weight deliberately and those who lost weight involuntarily. However, since few people manage to lose ten per cent of their weight deliberately unless they have a very pressing need to do so, which these people did not have, this is probably not very important.

There might also have been subgroups within the population in whom weight loss might have been a good thing, in some sense or other.

The paper does not, unfortunately, tell us whether the huge effort necessary to lose weight, if crowned with success, prolongs life or shortens it – or merely makes it seem longer.

The paper had one interesting locution new to me: mortality event. So much more accurate, don’t you think, than that loosest of terms, death?

The Oldie, 23–31 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 7PA letters@theoldie.co.uk

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The milkman cometh

SIR: I was astonished to read (Spring issue) that Hunter Davies believes he may be the only person left in the UK who has milk delivered in glass bottles every morning. Oop ’ere in t’north, we have milk delivered in this way. We also have Ringtons Tea delivered, from a dinky van, once a month. Not only that: our daily newspaper is delivered from a local newsagent every day.

I still have my copy of Mr Davies’s marvellous The Beatles: The Authorised Biography, from 1968. Yours faithfully, Alastair Jones, Wilmslow, Cheshire

Car on a hot tin roof

SIR: Although never myself guilty of such behaviour [as in Piers Pottinger’s ‘RIP practical jokes’, Spring issue], I can never forget the prank played on a master at my old school, the Friends’ School, Lisburn, Co Antrim, by the sixth-form boys at end of the summer term in 1958, when I was a mere fourth-former.

Our physics master, Mr Jess, was a popular young master who’d been a pupil there himself but a few years before, and also coached the rugby team – a role for which he was well suited, having the muscular, heavy build of a prop forward.

It was always amusing to see him unwind from his car, an early model with cycle wings of the three-wheeled Bond – a somewhat incongruous choice for such a big man, but road tax then was much cheaper for a three-wheeler.

The boys’ changing rooms were in the basement of the older Georgian building and were lit by clerestory windows, protruding about three feet above the surface of the small quad, with a flat concrete slab roof reminiscent of an air-raid shelter.

On the last day of term, Mr Jess went to depart in his trusty Bond only to discover it was not in its usual spot. A perambulation around the corner of the building in front of which he used to park revealed that his little car had been hoisted onto the flat roof of the changing room by a team of sixth-formers.

Happily, he was a man with a sense of fun and laughed heartily at the jest.

The boys concerned were of course in hiding to see what might transpire and so were able to restore it to ground level, allowing him to depart for the hols.

Sam Stewart, Diss, Norfolk

Dog’s dinner

SIR: Piers Pottinger’s article on practical jokes (Spring issue) omits many of the pranks he has played on his own friends. He was a legendary host. I remember a dinner he hosted during the Cheltenham Festival (horse-racing, not literary, obviously) where his guests were served individual steak-and-kidney pies, alongside the finest claret known to mankind.

The pies were of the finest quality –apart from one that had been specially prepared for a well-known Fleet Street political editor, which was instead filled with Pedigree Chum. The pie was gratefully devoured with comments about how Piers’s chef had surpassed himself that year.

I could add further stories about noses being painted blue in the middle of the night, itching powder placed in underpants and dog treats being served as pre-dinner snacks, but that might perhaps pre-warn future Pottinger guests. Yours etc,

Joe Saumarez Smith, Bloomsbury, London

Prudential Prue Leith

SIR: I do so agree with much of what Prue Leith says about staying in hotels (‘My Hotel Hell’, Spring issue), and especially about blankets rather than duvets, night lights, and folded loo paper. I would go further. When staying in hotels, especially if travelling alone, I want to relax! I am usually just having a few days’ break, and when going out want to leave clothes on a chair, shoes on the floor, personal items on the dressing table, and so on, without them being tidied up. When returning in the evening, I do NOT want to have to remake the bed as I like it.

So I usually tell reception that I do not need the room to be serviced, leave a large note to this effect on my table and hang the ‘Do Not Disturb’ card outside the door. If I need more tea or coffee, I collect it from Reception.

I realise that not everyone would agree with this but, in my busy working life (many years ago), I just went along with usual practice. In retirement, life should be easier.

John Pigott, Ringmer, East Sussex

Worst hotel in the world

SIR: To Prue Leith (ref ‘My Hotel Hell’, Spring issue):

You may think you know a nation, With a dreadful reputation For the worst hotel or inn, Where comfort is a mortal sin. But you don’t, if you’ve not stayed At Hotel Moskva, in Belgrade. Sincerely,

David Halley, Whitton

Patrick’s underwater walk

SIR: I fully understand how Patrick Barkham has cleverly ensured that the walk (Spring issue) from Trimingham to Overstrand and back will always remain ‘Norfolk’s best-kept secret’.

Patrick tells us, ‘One reason the beach is so quiet is that the cliffs are intimidatingly high.’

He then tells us, ‘Another reason for the absence of people is that these sands aren’t always exposed at high tide, and so you need to know the tide times’.

‘You didn’t think calling me Boy was in any way gender-prescriptive?’

But then he gently slips into the delicately nuanced, captivating prose something so devious, so cunning, and yet so subtle as almost to not be noticed at all: ‘We turned north-east’!!

Some in-depth research aided by my AA Concise Road Atlas Britain clearly shows that someone setting out in this direction and who was, for some entirely unknown reason, either wearing arm bands or prepared to hold their breath, sink to the bottom and run terribly fast would probably end up in Denmark.

Don’t worry, Patrick – your secret is safe with me.

Yours sincerely, Richard Langridge. Hundon, Suffolk

Santa flies to Malta

SIR: Memory Lane in the March issue sparked a memory I have from the late ’60s, when I worked as cabin crew for British European Airways.

We were taking boarding-school children to their parents on Malta for the Christmas holidays.

It was a night flight on a Vanguard aircraft, which had large, oval windows. The children were excited and obviously not going to sleep. I ‘borrowed’ some spray shaving foam from the steward’s overnight bag and we had great fun decorating the dark windows with snowy Christmas scenes.

I wasn’t very popular with the cleaners in Malta.

Jenny File, Folkestone, Kent

Bum steer

SIR: May I respectfully suggest that the comfort of a thong (ref Mary Killen’s Fashion Tips, May issue) is directly proportional to the size of the buttocks it dissects.

Mrs Bee, Alresford, Hampshire

A N vs D J

SIR: I was astounded by A N Wilson’s vitriolic ad hominem attack on D J Taylor in his review of Taylor’s new book on Orwell (Spring issue). Wilson starts by expressing his personal view of ‘why Orwell matters’, singling out Animal Farm as his own favourite, and then proceeds to dismantle Taylor’s book according to the extent to which it follows that personal view.

The first half of this ‘review’ is Wilson’s own view of Orwell, after which he proceeds to fire off progressively snide remarks about Taylor’s style (‘mixed metaphors and sloppy phrases’; ‘pettifogging chitchat’) and ends by calling Taylor a ‘Grub Street drudge of an author’.

Such playground yah-boo directed at a

‘You are not going on a jouney’ distinguished author, critic and Orwell expert is not worthy of any critic, whatever level of personal dislike may exist. To suggest that instead of Taylor’s elegant phrase ‘highly unflattering view’ of Southwold, when quoting A Clergyman’s Daughter, it would be better to write ‘Orwell hated Southwold’ is simply laughable. Yours, Brigid Purcell, Norwich, Norfolk

Griff’s grifters

SIR: Matthew Norman’s article in the Spring 2023 issue reminded me, and it was then confirmed by Griff Rhys Jones, that the collective noun for the leaders of some of our financial institutions is a wunch. As in a wunch of bankers. Faithfully yours, Geoff Margison, Edenfield, Lancashire

Joy of washday

SIR: How lovely to have clothes props revisited (Olden Life, Spring issue)!

It brought to mind other washing-day accoutrements – the dolly tub in which you soaked the clothes, the posser with which you pounded them clean, the wash board on which you scrubbed them, the mangle that wrung the water out and the good old maiden, a North-Western term for a clothes horse.

My grandmother draped clothes around the coal fire if the weather was too rainy to hang them outside. I can still recall the sweet aroma that the drying clothes exuded until you smelt the faint whiff of singeing as they came under the hiss of the flat iron, heated in the oven at the side of the fireplace.

Ah those Godly days!

Sue Tyson, Bramhall, Stockport

A policeman’s lot

SIR: An interesting article concerning police notebooks (Spring issue). As a retired police officer, I used these essential books every day. The imperial measure on the cover is there for officers to measure ‘bladed points and articles’ that may contravene the law.

As the books are evidential, it was essential to comply with the mnemonic NO ELBOWS:

NO Erasures, NO Leaves torn out, NO Blank spaces, NO Overwriting, NO Writing between lines, Statements in direct speech (CAPITAL LETTERS).

It was also absolutely essential not to leave your pocketbook lying about unattended, for if you did, then you would discover that a giant phallus had been drawn over two blank pages. Bearing in mind the above, much embarrassment could ensue if the book were perused in court.

Once, on parade at my nick, a young female Inspector decided to inspect ‘officer’s appointments’. Needless to say, she chose my pocketbook, complete with obligatory huge cartoon phallus. She viewed it and returned it to me without a blush or comment. Well played, ma’am, I thought.

Michael Gordon, Shepherdswell, Kent

Play up! And play the game!

SIR: Peter Bowen-Simpkins (‘Imbibing with Coleridge’, Letters, Spring issue) will find tonk defined in Chambers Dictionary as he remembers it from his cricketing days of yore.

He should also read, if he has not done so, Sir Henry Newbolt’s Vitai Lampada, a splendid poem which uses cricket as a metaphor for decent conduct throughout life. ‘Play up! play up!’ etc.

Mike Morrison, Whetstone, London N20

Sister Teresa’s botany class

SIR: It is unfortunate that, owing to either human error or an excess of technology, the relevant picture I send to The Oldie to illustrate last month’s God column failed to appear.

It should have depicted Rhododendron maddenii, which grows wild on the Tibet-Upper Burma border. It was somehow replaced by Lapageria rosea, the national flower of Chile, from the other side of the world.

Emma’s rhody

Emma Tennant is a stickler for correct nomenclature and will most probably have been surprised by the caption ‘Emma’s rhododendron’. Yours faithfully, Sister Teresa, Norfolk