Does anyone fancy a spot of naked wrestling in front of a roaring fire?
Come on, I want a show of hands. You know you do.
Nude wrestling, it strikes me, is a terrific way to lose weight and keep fit. Novice competitors do not need to invest in expensive sports kit. You just turn up at the venue, strip, and you’re good to grapple.
The chilly weather might require golfers to play off winter tees, or worse, cancel games due to frozen courses. But there are no such worries with wrestling au naturelle in one’s drawing room. It’s a sport for all seasons.
The only stipulation is that you have to be a bloke. Anything else – for example, if you were a woman – would be pervy. (Of course, woman vs woman bouts would be acceptable and I don’t want to be accused of being sexist. It is with mixed sex nude wrestling where potential problems could arise.)
And, speaking as a chap about the noble art of chaps’ wrestling, hairy is fine. Without being hair-ist, the hairier the better. In fact, if you have no body hair (due to cosmetic intervention) consider yourself disqualified.
Why am I making such a dogmatic ruling about body hair? And why, indeed, am I so fervently advocating naked bloke wrestling, a sport which I have never taken part in?
The reason is this: I am fed up with men being told they cannot have body hair. Sprouting tufts on one’s chest, shoulders, back or (let’s say it) bottom has become socially unacceptable. Having hair in these areas, and discussing it, has become a taboo subject. I’d say it’s the last taboo (because that’s what trend-spotting columnists do) but I think incest and cannibalism still trump what goes on with our follicles.
I saw the light last weekend when I happened to be flicking through the television channels and came across Ken Russell’s exuberant Women in Love. I tuned in just in time to see Glenda Jackson getting all hot and bothered with a herd of long-horned cattle.
Luckily, I lingered long enough to catch the famous nuddie wrestling scene involving Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. It remains madly compelling viewing, an arty version of the manly art of wrestling once espoused by the leotard-wearing Mick McManus and Giant Haystacks on ITV’s World of Sport.
No doubt the Reed/Bates fireside fight, with both men going at it like trains without so much as a protective cup between them, would be outlawed today on health and safety grounds. The scene remains, in all senses, a ballsy piece of film-making.
The homo-erotic undertones (overtones?) of the clash isn’t what piqued my interest. It was the nature of the leading men’s bodies. Both Oli and Al were what might today be called buff. They were trim, in good shape, no beer guts. But they were also strikingly normal.