Meddling Minty stokes the fires of British fascism

[Paul Rigby]

Oh, I thought it all this was about Cocker Spankers not Great Danes?

To the Editor, The Daily Torygraph, May 1979:

As the acclaimed author of Northern Roots: A History of Liverpool Dentistry, quite probably the definitive self-published tome on the subject, I trust no one will gainsay my right to indulge what Sigmund Feud ludicrously characterized as "the narcissism of small differences"?

"Cocker spankers" was not a reference to a breed of Tory dog, as your ill-informed columnist Ferdinand Mount absurdly insisted, but instead an historical manifestation of working-class Victorian pain relief, as pioneered in West Yorkshire in the mid-1870s.

Unable to ply temperance tooth sufferers with gin, lateral-thinking Tyke barbours had recourse to the old principle of pain distraction; and employed pugnacious midgets to administer a vigorous uppercut to the groin upon the trigger phrase, "All right, Cocker, sit thee down..."

I learned of this remarkable example of Victorian proletarian improvisation in the course of my many conversations with Lex Mackem Solicitors, whose intervention into my researches into the activities of Sean McCavity, the saintly dentist to the poor whom I had mistakenly styled "The White Coated Groper of Scotland Road" in the first edition of Northern Roots, corrected an egregious error.

I remain, Sir, an otherwise admiring observer of your organ,

E.P. Rigby