Is it just ME?

Or does doe es nothing beat the joy of a white hit fluffy fl luffy towel?

IT STAARTED STARTED in the haberdashery erdashery department d of Peter Peeter J Jones, the Chelsea outpost ooutpost of John Lewis. That’s Thatt’s where wheere I develfetish. developed oped my towelf towel fetish. I find myself theere there quite often often, running mmy my hands across the piles of perfectly perfeectly folded folded, fluffy cotton towwels. towels.

No nasty polyesster polyester blends blends. They should be 100 per cent cotton, and theyy they should be white, which meansm means they need regular wawashing. washing. Coloured towels hide stains and suggest a lackadaisica lackadaisical approach to laundry.

My fixation with large white towels, the sort you can drape around yourself like a bedsheet after a bath, bath means my airing cupboard is piled high with them.

But I was reassured about my habit by a recent Twitter debate, sparked by a chap from Boston asking how many towels he and his girlfriend should own.

‘I said ten and she looked at me like I was crazy,’ Abdul wrote on the social media site. ‘We have zero

I’ve stayed in castles where I was given towels that looked like they’d seen action in the war

frame of reference on the appropriate amounts of towels in a household of two.’ His question went viral, with even American model Chrissy Teigen weighing in on this important matter, declaring that 20 towels was too many.

But it depends what grade of towel we’re talking about. Traditionally, posh sorts have been parsimonious. I’ve stayed in castles and been left something the size of a flannel that looked like it had seen action in at least one war.

But the rise of shops like The White Company has made good towelling more of a status symbol.

In my flat, the premier league towels are my big Egyptian cotton ones. But you need second division towels, worn thin from decades of use, too. These are deployed for large spills, plumbing disasters and the occasional visit from my mother’s dog, Trumpet.