ROGER LEWIS: Is there any respite from the campaign brigade?

ROGER LEWIS: Veganuary, Sober October , LGBTQ+ History Month… Is there any respite from the unrelenting campaign brigade?

If Dry January wasn’t depressing enough for thirsty chaps like me, there’s another one now: Sober October.

All right, £789,000, at last count, has already been raised for Macmillan Cancer Support by members of the public pledging to keep off the booze until Halloween — abstinence that’s helping to ‘raise vital funds for people living with cancer’. 

So there’s undoubted merit in all these people spending a month on the water wagon.

And I don’t need to be persuaded that not drinking makes for better sleep, better concentration, better health in general —one is generally brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed.

But I’m afraid I’m getting fed up with being bossed about on account of these well-meaning campaigns that seem now to be attached to every month of the year.

Of Dry January, an executive at Alcohol Concern has said: ‘A month off can be quite a challenge, and by taking part together we’re aiming to create a supportive environment’ (Stock Image) 

Vegans are openly political about wanting to get rid of animal farms, turning us all into whey-faced bores with vitamin deficiencies and bandy legs (Stock Image)

I find I’m always being ticked off about healthier eating, or less damaging drinking. I am expected to take exercise, go on sponsored walks, sponsored bike rides, sponsored parachute jumps and swims for some cause or other.

The other day, I was invited to run a marathon to stop knife crime. I’m only surprised that I haven’t been asked to appear nude on a calendar. There are limits.

There’s not a moment when we are not made to feel guilty. 

Of Dry January, an executive at Alcohol Concern has said: ‘A month off can be quite a challenge, and by taking part together we’re aiming to create a supportive environment.’ 

But what if you don’t wish to take part? Does this mean you are beyond the pale? A grinch?

The vegan mob call for us to observe Veganuary, which is very pious. I grew up on a farm in Wales and my father ran the local slaughterhouse and butcher’s shop, so I’ve never had much to do with plant-based diets.

Nevertheless, vegans are openly political about wanting to get rid of animal farms, turning us all into whey-faced bores with vitamin deficiencies and bandy legs.

February is not immune either: it is LGBT+ History Month, as I am sure you are well aware. 

It also happens to be Whale Awareness Month, taking in Whale Week and World Whale Day. 

A month when, in contrast to the privations of Veganuary, we can at least celebrate blubber.

February is not immune either: it is LGBT+ History Month, as I am sure you are well aware

As I say, these monthly campaigns present charities with fund-raising opportunities, which is all to the good. But they wear me down; I can’t avoid the feelings of sin and inadequacy when my honest response to them is a shrug of the shoulders.

I won’t take you through every month in turn, but March brings us National Bed Month, which runs into National Pet Month — a handy confluence for those who like to let sleeping dogs lie on their bed. March is also Women’s History Month, a corrective to the view of history written by men, in their villainy, over the ages.

All well and good, all wonderful causes. But it actually makes me want to scream — although, come to think of it, I’d better bottle that up for Stress Awareness Month in April. 

In fact, I just wish they’d please stop pestering us with their earnest exhortations to behave better, to work together for the common good. Can’t they just leave us alone.

I flee, in particular, from the idea of Armpits4August. Under this scheme, women who wish to draw attention to ovarian issues, as well as the tyranny of beauty regimes, stop shaving that part of their anatomy for a month.

It is as daft, surely, as Movember — growing a moustache in November for prostate cancer, which comes after Pinktober — Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

‘Wearing a symbol representing healthier men and a healthier world’, according to the Movember posters. 

Apparently, going around looking like Tom Selleck or a 1970s porn star ‘shows everyone you walk past that men’s health matters to you’. Why, I don’t know. But those of us who don’t want to grow a moustache, are we lacking in virtue?

Facial hair is also part of Decembeard — ‘Grow a beard and help save lives!’ This one is for bowel cancer. In Australia, by contrast, men are encouraged to shave off their beards for leukaemia.

This really is where my animosity and scepticism come in. I don’t much go in for public displays, which are basically boasting: ‘I’m good, I care, I am aware of other people’s suffering’. 

I can’t stand seeing everyone weighed down with wristbands, pink ribbons, lapel badges, tie-pins and multicoloured lanyards. 

I bet these do-gooders, many of them bird watchers, sperm donors, hypnotherapists and fun-runners, are the sorts of people who — if ordering a Chinese takeaway — use chopsticks even when no one is watching.

This hectoring censoriousness all started, as far as I can see, back in February 1984, when, on Ash Wednesday, National No Smoking Day was inaugurated. 

The very idea of it — and the insistent tone — made me want to start smoking, especially when it was bolstered by World No Tobacco Day.

‘Time to quit?’ it asked on some of its publicity material. Others demanded that we ‘Break free!’ Paradoxically the extreme libertarian position is to permit people the freedom to puff away like billy-o if they feel like it, which is the viewpoint of David Hockney, still lighting up aged 86.

Though I have, in fact, never smoked, I say all this in my official position as Britain’s Least Healthy Man.

Diabetes, pancreas trouble, skin conditions, heart failure issues, you name it, I’ve got it. Even my teeth fell out during lockdown.

There ought to be 12-months’ worth of wristbands and lanyards issued just for me — but you see, my point is, I don’t welcome being coerced, lectured and told.

And then there’s the puritanical edge to these marketing campaigns. They appeal to our inner Oliver Cromwell. 

Indeed, a point has been reached where there is hardly five minutes left in the calendar year when I can make merry, when I am not being disapproved of, ticked off and expected to make sacrifices.

What kind of dull world is it where dry martinis and steaks and laughter have given way to bottled water, alfalfa sprouts and hand-wringing? I can’t abide it — and to those who will insist on compulsory exercise and regular medical check-ups, let me just remind everyone of Sir Billy Connolly’s cautionary tale.

‘Health-wise,’ he said, ‘eating brown bread adds about a fortnight to your life. But this isn’t a fortnight when you’re 18, having sex with everything in sight. This is a fortnight when you’re sat in a nursing home being spoon-fed. With food from a blender.’

Roger Lewis’s new book, Erotic Vagrancy: Everything About Richard Burton And Elizabeth Taylor, will be published by Riverrun on October 26.

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