Then came pilates. I’d barely given it the time of day, seeing it as yet another of those vapid, wishy-washy, hippie-dippy fads practised by bored Cotswolds housewives between lunch at Estelle ...

I say baloney, they look like your damn dire ... Ray and I called ourselves freaks. “Hippie” was strictly a media term, coined by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen.