The Massage

In these troubled times, we need all the heroes we can get, and the BBC Two dating show, Would Like To Meet Again, provided one the other day in the form of Jon Massey.

The engaging bachelor from Plymouth has since found love in the intervening six years, but the producers first picked up on his story when he was living on a diet of chicken and chips, displaying a penchant for leather trousers and still a virgin at the age of 41.

But these weren’t the only qualities that made him endearing. When the programme’s makeover specialists encouraged him to have a massage, so that he might experience female contact for the first time in 20 years, he told them to “bugger off”.

At the salon it took 40 minutes of nagging for him to agree to have his hands massaged and then, after yet more cajoling, he conceded to a shoulder rub, but remained fully clothed throughout. What a guy!

Indeed, of all the excesses of the past decade – mindless debt, bankers’ bonuses and so on – the rise of “the massage” has surely been the most disconcerting…

Read atTimes Online