Giggs’s love poem awoke a memory...

IT WAS hard not to feel a tiny bit sorry for randy Ryan Giggs when that ‘love poem’ to his ex-girlfriend became public knowledge.

He’ll never live it down, and will probably be sent images of Native American totem poles (beautiful, interesting things they are too) for the rest of his life.

That Giggs masterpiece left me with giggles, triggering a memory the years had mercifully wiped away. But Ryan brought it up!

At the end of October 1967, I’d only just met the second-year philosophy student at UCL whom I was to marry in a whirlwind just four months later.

But a hapless chemistry student with a massive crush had been following me about for days, begging me to go out with him. I didn’t fancy him or his test tubes one molecule but (being a kind sort of girl … occasionally) finally, feeling so sorry for him, I agreed to go for a drink. Big mistake. Huge.

Off we went (with me yearning for the new man, Jonathan) to the pub and he told me at length all about the synthesis of inorganic solids and made clear how much he wanted our substances to bond.

Then, as he walked me to Tottenham Court Road Tube, he tried damply to hold my hand, only to have it snatched away. Poor man, whose name I quickly forgot. What became of him? Did he win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry? Perhaps he became something large in polymers. I’ll never know.

But the following day something truly terrible lurked in my college pigeonhole. It was a screed of deep-feeling doggerel addressed to this literature student with a passion for poetry.

How hard he’d tried! The full, elemental horror has gone, but, after 55 years, the last two lines remain seared on my brain: ‘I see you as a lovely witch And I can feel my penis twitch.’ Forgive me, dear readers — I know this page deals with sad subjects. But can you blame me for wanting to raise a smile?

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.