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No place for a boy
CONSIDERING our national obsession with violent crime, child abuse and the rising tide of juvenile delinquency, the current enthusiasm for male au pairs seems distinctly odd. Not that I am suggesting there is anything wrong with Vito Vitolovic, who has just started work in London as the first male au pair under the new Home Office rules, which now let in the boys. He does look very gloomy, as well he might, being Croatian, but he is no doubt a prince among au pairs in every other respect. It is just that it seems to me quaintly optimistic to invite into your house, sight unseen, a young male foreigner about whom you know very little, to look after your most precious possessions, including your children.
I am all for equal opportunities, other things being equal, but in this case they are not. I do not want to keep nagging on about testosterone, but this is what sorts the boys from the girls. Because of floods of male hormones, very young men are at the most aggressive stage of their lives, and at the height of their sexual powers, but are often without the maturity that brings self-control. And little boys and girls at bedtime can be both infuriating and seductive.
Men are hugely more likely than women to commit crimes, and violent crimes at all ages, but particularly at the age of the average au pair. Almost all sex offenders and the criminally insane are men.
Men are 13 times more likely than women to commit a motoring offence - should anyone think of letting Heinz or Jacques drive the children to school in the family motor - and commit nearly 100 per cent of dangerous driving, drunken driving and speeding offences. And men under 22 are far more likely than young women to have an accident.
It may seem morbid to dwell on these statistical risks. The real problems of male au pairs are much more likely to be struggling to be one of the girls with all the other au pairs. Nonetheless, anyone who has employed nannies and au pairs will know that there are always one or two who are off their heads; it is rather frightening to find you have left your children with a drunken pathological liar who has terrorised the cleaner into silence, and worked her way though your entire collection of wine, as happened to friends of mine. How much worse if this monster had been a big, strong testosterone-crazed male and an aggressive driver to boot.
THE formidable Beryl Goldsmith, formerly personal assistant to Lord Tebbit, has hit a national nerve with her criticism of the Princess of Wales. 'Why the lady continues to be regarded as hardly less than saintly by the British press remains one of life's great mysteries.' Miss Goldsmith is quite right, or rather she was, because one mystery has been suddenly replaced by another. The tabloids have turned on the saint to denounce her: 81 per cent of readers called a Daily Mirror hotline to say she is a hypocrite, which is almost as silly as calling her a saint.
It is the function of the tabloids to add to the gaiety of nations with malicious gossip and gross irrationality, so no one can be surprised, least of all the Princess, who has been very shrewd in manipulating them for many years. However, those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, and the same applies to the media. The Princess rose by an inflated view of her merits; she escaped popular criticism when she deserved it; but she is, for now at least, sinking under accusations that are quite unjust.
Her only real crime seems to be that she has enjoyed her exotic summer holidays. There is nothing particularly hypocritical about going on expensive trips to beautiful places, as well as doing good works; it is exactly what all the very rich women in her set do. They have the private tropical island and couturier circuit and then they have the disease-ball circuit. The Princess of Wales falls neatly into this convention; she is actually a very typical jet-setter.
Her only problem is one of image, and here she seems to be losing her touch.
She still does not quite seem to realise that a great many people resent her dumping the Prince of Wales, while retaining all the privileges of his position, and that in order to get away with it she will have to go around looking miserable and pressing lots of leprous flesh for quite a while longer. That might make her a hypocrite, but if she does not do it, she will continue to be called one.
LATERAL thinking is not something you would normally associate with British Rail, but I am profoundly impressed by its inspired new rules on drinking.
It will be impossible to drink a pint of beer at lunchtime without risking disciplinary action, since the permitted levels of alcohol in the blood are to be even lower than the police breathalyser threshold, and this applies to everybody. And unions are warning employees to beware of the morning-after effects of drinking. Life as an employee of British Rail will soon be quite intolerable, but it will be impossible to complain because the measures have the full support of the Government and health quangoes. It is a strategy that should recommend itself to every company trying to cut costs and encourage voluntary redundancies in droves.
IN the Psychiatrist's Chair last weekend, on Radio 4, Marjorie Proops, the agony aunt, told Dr Anthony Clare, the handsome media psychiatrist, that she had decided to reveal all about her sexless marriage and her long adulterous affair with a colleague, to general outrage, as a result of going to a psychotherapist. 'Don't you think,' he asked thought- fully, 'that this passion for revelation may itself be a sickness?' Well, he said it.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, September 05, 1993
