I belong to the best club in the world – I’m one of the Great Unclubables.
My mate and I did join the Boys’ Brigade for a few weeks, mainly because people kept going on about the Scouts but that looked far too regimented. As it turned out, the BB also had adults telling us what to do (we could get enough of that at home), so our membership lasted long enough to get one of those nice little badges each. I still have mine. Somewhere.
Why is it that you can’t be a member of an organisation like the Brigade or the Scouts and still be one of the lads? The two are mutually incompatible. If you’re one of the lads you learn about life the proper way – by whisper, by joke, by dare, by teasing, and then – finally, best of all – by fumbling experience. Yes, I do mean sex, too.
So I was horrified to read yesterday that the Scout Association is to introduce sex education. This from the movement whose founder Lord Baden-Powell's idea of sex education was to urge boys who feel sexual urges to “wash your parts in cold water and cool them down”.
In these politically correct times, it behoves me to say that sex education is down to your parents, and then your school. As someone who puts political correctness on a par with herpes and semolina, I would suggest that the school of life – i.e. behind the bikesheds – still does a reasonable job.
And talking of political correctness, can you imagine a noble idiot like Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell being given permission today to take hundreds of pubescent boys away to camp on a secluded island?
Quite. I rest my case.
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