Gyles Brandreth’s Diary

I’m delighted to back a good cause, even in the most intimate area

This may be the April edition, but this is not an April Fool. This is for real, though I find it hard to believe myself. I have just been invited by the government of Thailand to be the ‘voice' of its national campaign to counter the growing popularity of penis-whitening in southeast Asia. (Feel free to reread that sentence before proceeding.)

In many countries, from India to Malaysia, paler skin is considered more desirable than darker skin. Dark skin is associated with outdoor work and manual labour, and paler skin with indoor life, sophistication and success. Consequently, across Asia, there is a booming business in creams and potions designed to lighten your skin.

In Thailand, it seems, the situation is getting out of control as men, hoping for ‘all-over pallor', are spending hundreds of pounds they can't afford on an intimate laser procedure designed to break down the melanin in the skin of their private parts. According to the deputy director-general of Thailand's health service support department, the snappily named Dr Tongchai Ke era ti hut ta yako rn, the increasingly popular treatment is becoming a serious health hazard, leading to penile scarring, inflammation and ‘nasty-looking spots'.

That's the essence of the message they are hoping I might like to get across in a series of public service radio announcements being produced in English and in Thai. I've been chosen as the English voice, it seems, because my tones are ‘mature and authoritative, yet reassuring'. I am flattered. In the UK, I am already the ‘voice' of Rowse honey. I think this might extend my reach and range quite nicely.

The University of Boston has a campus in Kensington and the other day I was invited to take part in a ‘meet the author' seminar attended by the fortunate students whose university course includes four months of study in London. I talked to them about my murder mystery novels, set in late-19th-century London and featuring Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, among my leading characters. One of the students (aged about twenty) asked me to name my favourite Victorian novel. Given they were all young women (and pleasantly feisty with it), I suggested Vanity Fair. They were confused when I then mentioned the name Thackeray. Naturally, they all thought I was recommending the monthly magazine.

Sharing this story on Twitter prompted my friend Kate Levey to recall the time at the end of the 1960s when her mother, the great writer Brigid Brophy, was sitting in a taxi and the car radio was belting out the current hit Delilah. ‘Do you like Tom Jones?' asked the taxi driver. ‘Oh yes,' said Brophy. ‘It's my favourite novel.'

Sad news from Brussels and it is nothing to do with Brexit. The Belgium telegram service has just closed after 171 years.

In Russia, Japan and Mexico, they still have a telegram service, but in Europe only Italy maintains the great tradition – and that may be under threat because a huge number of Italy's telegrams were sent to the Italian community living in Belgium. Probably the most famous telegram to come out of Italy was the one sent by the American journalist Robert Benchley to his editor at the New Yorker, Harold Ross, when Benchley arrived in Venice for the first time: ‘streets full of water. please advise.'

Another of my favourites was sent by the great American film director Billy Wilder in the mid-1950s when he was in Paris making a movie. It was at the time when the bidet was coming into fashion in the US as a must-have bathroom accessory, and the then Mrs Wilder, back in Los Angeles, wanted to have one. She instructed her husband to buy a bidet while he was filming in France and get it shipped over to Hollywood. Unfortunately, so great had been the recent demand for bidets that, when Wilder went out in search of one, he failed to find it. He wired his wife with the news: ‘unable find bidet. suggest headstand in shower.'

When I was in my twenties and we still had a telegram service in the UK (they ended here in 1982), I sent them all the time. I relished the challenge of creating pithy, witty ones and I loved the wanton extravagance involved. ‘When an actor has money,' said Chekhov, ‘he doesn't send letters; he sends telegrams.'

One of the perks of hosting this magazine's celebrated Oldie of the Year Awards is that I get to meet some of the great figures of our time and learn a few of their secrets. One of those honoured this year was the foxy glove puppet Basil Brush, whose minder/manipulator prefers to remain anonymous but whose commitment to his craft I feel able to share with you. In order for Basil to make a starry, two-minute surprise appearance in the dining room of Simpson's in the Strand at 3.15 pm, this brilliant puppeteer was ready to crouch inside a three-foot-square wooden box (covered with a tablecloth) for just under three hours. That's dedication.

Another of the honoured was the most prolific dramatist of our time, the mighty Sir Alan Ayckbourn, 78, who has 82 full-length plays to his credit, with more in the pipeline. He gave a wonderful acceptance speech – wry and selfdeprecating – but told me afterwards that he had inadvertently forgotten to mention that his new play, due to open in Scarborough in September is entitled Better Off Dead! ‘On second thoughts,' he added, ‘in view of the occasion, that might been have inappropriate.'