Watergate

Amid the furore of Brexit negotiations this week, in which one politician after the next tried and failed to find a solution to the witless mass opinion of the British public, one news story went largely unnoticed. The lifeless body of a man from Daventry was found inside a wall in a woman’s washroom. He’d been there for over a month. With tactful reserve, the Guardian newspaper reported that “his motive for climbing behind the wall is not known”.

I’ll bet there are hundreds of male bodies decomposing in the infrastructure of female toilets. There must tens if not hundreds of thousands of men worldwide who do this sort of thing. For the sake of argument, let us cautiously assume that one in every twenty men on earth is currently stationed behind a stud wall while a woman urinates a matter of inches away. It only takes a few trapped limbs and heart attacks before the body count really starts to pile up.

People forget, but most men disappear off the map after formal education. They stop turning up for work one day and colleagues naturally assume they’ve topped themselves, quietly taking them off the payroll. Most, of course, have actually topped themselves. But some are just fatally trapped in the building’s infrastructure.

Exterior wall – damp proof course – pervert – stud wall – plasterboard. It’s a familiar story. A lot has been done in recent years to combat male depression, but women have to recognise that there is quite likely a man trapped about a foot and a half away from you at this very moment. And he needs your help.

The safest thing to do would be to put CCTV up in the ladies’ latrines. Then we can all rest easy. But how likely is that in the current climate? Fear of big brother, the rise in feminism and GDPR make it a non-starter. It’s a murky business either side of the party wall, and we can’t just brush it under the carpet.

Nobody with the exception of Joanna Lumley can solve all of the world’s problems. But together, with patience and a notable degree of understanding, we can each do our bit.

So a personal request from Too Good for the English Game. Please, next time you see a familiar face staring up at you from the u-bend, or you hear a faint breathing sound to your left even though you know you’re in the end cubicle, reach out to the man at your side. Give him a blanket, a hot cup of tea, and ask him to turn off any audio-visual equipment. Because Elon Musk isn’t going to lend a helping hand out of this tight situation. Not while all the R&D money is being diverted to Legal. It’s up to us to talk these men down from the porcelain cliff edge.

Thank your for your understanding.