Like many other links to Europe, bidets have almost died out here. What a pity. A brave campaign was launched to save them by the Council of British Sanitary Pottery Manufacturers in 1963, but failed. We were restrained by British prudery, suggested the council, “depriving the country of the most hygienic washing appliance of them all”.
What’s the matter with us? The Italians and the French have used bidets for 300 years (and not just at court or in brothels). Perhaps we’re still too embarrassed to embrace this vital bit of bathroom equipment. Or to talk about washing our bottoms. I’m using bottom as a catch-all term, because there are so many ailments and substances that the bidet can heal and deal with effectively: piles, periods, fissures, itches, prolapses, as well as your everyday effluvia, but we have long been a relatively prudish and grubby lot as far as down there goes.
“There are no women in the world so inattentive to this discharge [menstruation] as the English, and they suffer accordingly,” said the 18th-century liberal physician William Buchan sensibly, blaming “false modesty, inattention and ignorance of what is beneficial”.
Quite right. My mother would have agreed. She was a bidet pioneer, and had one in the 50s. A boyfriend of mine mistook our bidet for a urinal, but luckily my mother never noticed, otherwise he would have been out on his ear. She was mad keen on bidets and could barely live without one. Little was more important to her than a scrupulously clean bottie. And bidets are so handy. You don’t have to fill a whole bath, or contort yourself in a shower, you just move snappily from lav to bidet, and hey presto – a clean, soaked and soothed personal area. Heaven. And they use so little water. You can also wash your feet or a small dog in one. Why are bidets not all the rage? Don’t wait until you’re too old to struggle in and out of the bath or stand upright in a shower. Face up to your bottom’s requirements. Buy a bidet everybody, now.
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