Sratch 'n' sniff

Dr Elaine Murphy, inexplicably, now now Baroness Murphy, has exposed the spurious nature of the alleged male ailment about which her husband wrote to the BMJ in 1974 which was said to affect the scrotum of cellists - exposing also the credulity of generations of medical doctors.

This reminds Lord Patel of the famous incident when Sir Thomas Beecham abruptly brought a rehearsal of the London Philharmonic to an abrupt halt in the middle of an Elgar variation. he looked with scorn at one of the evidently discomfited First lady cellists who instantly became the centre of atention.

"Madame" , he boomed to the silent and serried rows of the orchestra."You have been blessed with an instrument of the most sublime beauty between your legs .....and all you can do is sit there and scratch at it".