LIZ JONES: Would madam like the holistic hooey scrub with her massage?

By Liz Jones Diary for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 02:07 BST, 3 September 2017 | Updated: 02:09 BST, 3 September 2017

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Last week, it was in the news that a ‘drunken’ health spa manager, wearing a bikini no less, allegedly sexually assaulted a runner by giving him a ‘raunchy massage’. She apparently ignored his pleas to please, please STOP.

At last! It’s one of the unspoken truths no one dare utter. Such as you hate 70 per cent dark chocolate. And museums. I have finally come across one other, traumatised human being who simply cannot stand being massaged, and wants it all to STOP.

First of all, I detest those italicised words on the brochure when you go to book something in the hotel spa, mainly because you are so bored in your room on holiday and want to stab your husband as he keeps drawing the curtains and watching football.

Words such as ‘Come and be pampered in a holistic haven’. And ‘on the third floor, you will find a philosophy of wholeness of body and mind, the full revitalisation of self’.

I have endured 30 years of massages (and you wonder why I’m bankrupt: the massage with clam shells at Harrods costs £130 and includes a natural colonic cleanse, though I doubt you’ll be able to afford food ever again)

You can leave your troubles at the door, apparently (as long as you haven’t left your wallet in your room), and indulge in uplifting mandarin and sacred frankincense to realign the mind and the emotions. Hens can find Zen by indulging (now, that’s another overused word: indulge) in an extensive menu of scrubs that will melt away stress. What a load of hooey!

Atop a mountain in Jamaica, I lay prone while warm oil was dripped on my forehead; I worried I was about to be pan fried.

Atop Capri, my legs were bandaged then plastered, and I was forced to walk round and round in something that resembled a flooded horse walker behind Trinny Woodall, whose legs are so long I began to feel like a Shetland pony. In Puglia, I was laid out on the earth floor of a subterranean cave and a young man walked barefoot on my body while suspended from ropes in the ceiling.

I really do let men walk all over me. And yet I am still as stiff as a board, and was told only the other day the muscles in my shoulders ‘think they’re bones’.

It’s the ridiculous, colonialist rituals I hate. The padding about in slippers behind therapists on less than the minimum wage. The ringing of cow bells (and cash registers). The being sat on a low Indian stool, and made to sniff several different aromatherapy oils: ‘What am I, a bloodhound?’

The washing of feet in rose petals. The having to be naked while you crawl arthritically on to the bed (‘Do you have a step?’), place your face in the hole at the end, and try not to dribble on the young woman’s perfect toes as she kneads your oiled, collapsed buttocks and sprinkles you with regenerating algae as though she were Mary Berry herself.

I particularly can’t stand massages where you’re asked to do the work, such as ‘Take a really deep breath in!’ and ‘Bend your calf to your thigh and stretch!’ I think the real reason women book massages is to have a good lie down without some man next to us using our back fat as an iPad prop. Unless you’re a professional athlete, men who have massages are just avoiding the children and eye contact.

Facials, though, are even worse. The therapist will first ‘assess your skin’ under a light as bright as the sun and say: ‘Oh dear, have you not been drinking 15 litres of water a day?

‘Have you been outside, in daylight, without a full niqab? Have you been sleeping on a cheap pillowcase from Next? Hmmmm. Let me blast you with oxygen while I make out your bill.’

THEY then trowel on a rejuvenating mask, before disappearing for the rest of the hour. Why not massage my feet and hands while we wait, instead of vanishing for a fag? At a ski hotel in Alta Badia in Italy, I was told ‘Don’t go out on the snow as it reflects too much sunlight’ and ‘Do you want an emergency chin, nostril and upper lip wax?’ Oh dear God, do I?

I never leave these terry- towelled terrariums feeling rejuvenated, just sore from all the pummelling, from the elbows ground into my spine, my face permanently creased from that damned hole.

My cellulite is never cured, it’s just dispersed around my body, like a dropped bowl of porridge, the words ‘Remember to drink lots of water’ ringing in my desiccated ears.