In most cases, feet have got to be about the most neglected part of the human body.

In my case, I have to say that they are justly neglected.

Most of the other parts of my body appear to be average to good. I won’t bore you with a breakdown of this analysis but I’ll just say that they have all been viewed extensively over the years and nobody has laughed so far. Sadly, such is not the case with my feet.

For example, I have a bunion. For those of you who think that a bunion may be halfway between a bun and an onion, I should explain that this is “a painful, inflamed swelling of the bursa at the first joint of the big toe, characterised by enlargement of the joint and lateral displacement of the toe”. Well, in my case it’s not inflamed or painful, which is just as well as I’ve had it all my life.

Then there’s the hammer toe. Now as hammer toes go, mine is perfect. I dare say that in a hammer toe competition I’d stand a chance of limping off with first prize. The only problem, is that I don’t really want a hammer toe. For a start it has never hammered anything and doesn’t look as if it ever will and secondly, it’s not much good as a toe. It just sort of crouches there like a sprinter about to burst out of the blocks without actually going anywhere. In fact, it has now been ready for the starting pistol for 57 years.

A hammer.

And then there’s the little toe on my left foot. It seems to be in a perpetual race to keep up with the hammer toe but as the hammer toe has not yet started the race, it’s still somewhere in the changing room. Well, that was a pretty laboured metaphor so let’s just say that it’s about one third of the way down my foot and doing nothing in particular. Just twiddling its thumbs – if toes have thumbs. I doubt that there’s even a bone inside it.

The cubic foot. The worst you can have.

But it does have a toenail. And it’s difficult to cut. When it needs cutting, which is roughly once every ten years, I have to be very careful not to remove the nail entirely. It’s the sort of job best done with a jeweller’s monocle or possibly a microscope. I get the feeling that the toe felt that it really had to have a nail but grew one rather grudgingly, as a sort of token gesture. “Look ! There’s the nail! Satisfied now?”

And I have at least three other toes – or I think I do as I haven’t counted them recently – that seem to have given up on their colleagues entirely. In fact they are so ashamed that they’ve actually hidden themselves away behind their adjoining toes. Again, this makes cutting the nails very difficult as you have to coax them out first. And what do you use to coax a toe? I’ve looked in vain for “toe coaxers” in those ads that feature useful gadgets like incontinence pants and automated stocking pullers but there just aren’t any. I’ve tried threatening them but they seem to think they have nothing to lose.

And if this was not enough, my feet are also flat. I’ll grant you that this would have got me out of military service, if anyone had been rash enough to have called me up for it, but that’s only a small consolation when you have to plod around like Jar Jar Binks after a night on Cilona-extract Death Sticks. Flat feet mean that your entire body has to adapt to walking like a brontosaurus, which means that your arms have to adopt a sort of backwards posture to prevent you from falling over. I’ve seen Prince Charles walk more elegantly.

The art of walking with flat feet.

Naturally, I’ve had most of the other foot ailments that plague people from time to time. Blisters, corns, athlete’s foot, veruccas, etc. But these are nothing. Everyone gets them. Don’t even bother telling me about them because telling me about your corns would be like telling someone who’s been blind since birth that you now need reading glasses.

A really bad case of the athletes.

My feet also used to sweat a lot. Over the years, I have trained them not to do this but at the expense of some regret. After all, feet are meant to sweat, as are hands. This is an inbuilt reaction to stress. I’m sure we’ve all watched films like “Cliffhanger” and noticed that our hands and feet were sometimes sweating profusely. This is to increase our grip on rocks and branches if we have to make a quick getaway. It’s no coincidence that gymnasts and weightlifters apply chalk to their hands to make them slip on the bars. Sweat increases traction. So please don’t apply anything to your feet to make them sweat less because you never can tell when you might have to make a quick exit up a tree when pursued by a particularly miffed leopard. Naturally you should remove any shoes and socks before you run and, admittedly, this might enormously multiply the chances of your being eaten but bare feet and a drop of sweat will see you up the nearest baobab before you can say Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.

Enormous foot attacked by giant piranhas.

However, do remember to change your socks.

Yet, in spite of the above, I love my feet. They have a certain style. A je-ne-sais-quoi, if I may be permitted. Certainly, they’re not bog-standard feet like everyone else has. At the very least, they have reduced people to tears of mirth and you can’t say that of many feet or a lot of stand-up comedians either. Neither do I have any problem in exposing my feet to the gaze of other people. They can look as much as they want and, if they giggle a bit, I’ll take it as a compliment. This still hasn’t stopped the three ashamed toes from hiding away but if anything is going to get them to open up a bit, it’s the promise of stardom. I mean, why hide your light under a big toe?

So there they brood, six feet below me. Well two actually…you know what I mean anyway. I can tell they’re not very happy being the way they are because they tell me from time to time. Just the odd pinch and the occasional complaint if they have to go up a mountain, which is de rigeur here in Norway. I have to admit that they don’t really give a lot of trouble. They just grumble like a couple of OAPs queuing for their pensions. They’re resigned to their feet.

Oh, dearie me, what a terrible pun.

Well, quite a bit actually. A lot of people firmly believe that the name that you are given is a major determining factor in who you are and how you will behave throughout your life. Although I can see the attractiveness of this, I can’t really say that I subscribe to the idea. It’s certainly a fact that few people today call a child Adolf but this does not seem to have put an end to genocide or wars of conquest. Personally, I’ve met many people with many different names and I’ve yet to see any such link between name and behaviour. Admittedly, I haven’t met any Adolfs but I’ve met more than a handful of Erics and none of them seemed to be weedy little guys with spectacles and anoraks. Eric Clapton, who I haven’t met, is a case in point. Good guitar player, lousy train-spotter. Mind you, he has the spectacles.

Eric Clapton

However, a far more worrying aspect of the belief that your name will influence your life is an apparent conviction on the part of some people that giving their children particular names will actually contribute to their success in life. Film stars and pop singers, who are all perceived to be successful, are a prime example. So too are footballers and other sports personalities. What these people fail to grasp is that calling your little girl Kylie will not necessarily make her blonde, petite and perfectly formed. And it certainly won’t make her Australian, unless she happens to be born there. Similarly, Jack, which for centuries was associated with sailors, has now come to symbolise an individual, devil-may-care attitude to life. However, not every Jack is an Oscar-winning actor or a charismatic pirate (who was played by an actor with the truly evocative name of John Christopher Depp II). In fact, it might turn out to be a rather unsuitable name for a solicitor, just as Kylie might not be quite the right name for a government minister.

Kylie Minogue

However, by a weird twist of fate, these celebrities themselves seem to favour naming their own children after inanimate objects, characters from low-budget science fiction movies or the sort of onomatopoeic gibberish that most people grow out of at the age of three. So we have Zowie Bowie, Dweezil and Moon Unit Zappa, Zak Starkey and Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof. Not to mention Fifi Trixibelle, Heavenly Hiranni Tiger Lily and Little Pixie (but you can call me Little for short).

Of course, there are also people who misguidedly give their children names to celebrate their own obsessions. A fair example of this is the unfortunate girl who was named after the entire Liverpool football team, who were all men. And there are those poor people who are clearly the victims of seriously deranged parents, such as a certain German immigrant to the United States who - and I kid you not – went under the snappy monicker of: Adolf Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvim John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Zerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorffvoralternwarengewissenhaftschaferswesenchafewarenwholgep
flegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschutzenvonangereifenduchihrraubgiriigfeindewelchevorralternzwolftausend
jahresvorandieerscheinenbanderersteerdeemmeshedrraumschiffgebrauchlichtalsseinursprungvonkraft
gestartseinlangefahrthinzwischensternartigraumaufdersuchenachdiesternwelshegehabtbewohnbarplan
etenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneurassevanverstandigmenshlichkeittkonntevortpflanzenundsicher
freunanlebenslamdlichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurchtvorangreifenvonandererintelligentgeschopfsvon
hinzwischensternartigraum.

Of Ulm

I only hope that his parents had to repeat that several times at the passport office.

Even more bizarre is the story of the first British expedition to visit a remote valley in the Hindu Kush in the nineteen-fifties. They were made very welcome by the locals, who had not seen a European since Alexander the Great’s army and were really quite impressed with the progress we had made since then. They became highly popular during their brief stay. Unfortunately, when they finally departed for yet another remote valley, they accidentally left behind the workshop manual for one of their Land Rovers. A visitor to the valley many years later reported meeting a family with five children who were called First Gear, Second Gear, Third Gear, Fourth Gear and Reverse. Who was evidently destined to be the black sheep of the family.

But back on planet earth, we also have the posh names. These are names like Henry, William, Lucas, Marcus, Arabella, Jennifer, Ruth, Tamsin, etc. Naturally this does not mean that their parents are equally posh themselves. Many of them, of course, believe that calling their firstborn Marcus Arabella William Postlethwaite will guarantee them future success but the number of Marcuses and Arabellas in rehab centres should indicate that this is not necessarily the case. And Marcus is a pretty uncomfortable name for a welder. Let alone Arabella.

Not that name-giving is necessarily so class-based. No, I tell a lie. It is. There are certainly names that transcend the barriers of wealth and class – John and Anne to name but two – but there are far more that are deeply rooted in a class divide. You will not find many sons of the British aristocracy called Wayne and you will not find many miner’s daughters called Alexandra. So one would assume that there’s a certain amount of peer-group pressure when it comes to naming your children. Essentially, there’s nothing wrong with the name Wayne, even though the film star who is largely responsible for it was actually called Marion. And if you ignore its connotations, the name has a nice ring to it. Alexandra, on the other hand, promises a lot more than it will ever deliver.

And then, of course, there’s Victoria Beckham.

Victoria Beckham

How little life resembles art.

So , to draw this drivel to a conclusion, would a rose smell the same if it were called a geranium? And the answer is, of course, that it would. However, you cannot entirely discount the fact that a Henry might grow up to think and behave like a Henry. As did Henry Cooper, for example. Would he have knocked down Cassius Clay (as he then was) if his name had been…well…Eric for example? And would Cassius Clay (oh, alright then, Muhammad Ali) have become so successful if his name had been Roger Jones? Possibly.

But didn’t he have the right name at the right time? Before and after he changed it? Cassius Clay was perfect for an age when actors were called Rip Torn and Rock Hudson; Muhammad Ali reflected an era of raised political awareness and social involvement.

Both names packed a punch.