Day 56: I Propose An Immediate Ban On Social Kissing, And Demand The Reinstatement Of The Handshake

I'm not talking about man-likes-lady kissing. I'm off that for a bit, as regular readers will know. I'm talking about 'social kissing'.

It's OK if you're a Continental, particularly if you're a Frenchified Continental (for e.g., I think the Belgians and some of the Swiss count). Even then it's complicated: I get kissed twice, three or four times when I go to France; it all depends on whether they think they're posh or not, whether they know me well, and which part of France they were from originally. But it's British Social Kissing I object to.

In the olden days, it was just Sloanes (pseudo-posh types) who did it, mainly in The White Horse in Parson's Green whilst wearing rugby shirts or pearls (sometimes together). Then media types did it, and going to a Media Function (part of my old job, and not a part I miss), would mean you would get a kiss on each cheek from up to one hundred different people in a night, whether you knew them or not. By the mid-90s, you had to kiss all your colleagues in your advertising agency before you'd even sat down with your double-decaf monkeyjizz latte. By 1998, a commercial shoot would often be delayed by up to an hour as the director, producer, producer's assistant, make-up and wardrobe people, sound boys, gaffers and runners kissed themselves into the ground.

As recently as June 2006, I went to a meeting with 15 people, all of whom kissed me on each cheek. I had no say in the matter; they just did it. The meeting was delayed by 10 minutes.

It's getting out of hand. If you actually like someone, you end up giving them a hug. And it's only going to get worse. The sheer waste of time aside, it's just wrong. We're British, for fuck's sake. We don't do touching, unless it's man-likes-lady time (and even then it's not guaranteed).

I had a meeting with an advertising recruitment person today. You would think, wouldn't you, that they'd be top of the list of Unwanted Kiss Distributors. But no. She shook my hand, and I shook hers. Then her boss (who I have met and who could, theoretically, kiss me as she has at least met me), also shook my hand. And I shook hers. It was quick, not awkward or over-familiar, business-like (as businesslike as anything can be if I'm within 10 feet of it), and nice.

So it's time to bring back the handshake. If you're really keen, you could bow; add a click of the heels if you fancy it. If it's someone super-exciting and you're a girl, curtsey. (If you want to know how, you just put your right leg behind your left leg and bend at the knees a bit. I think. No doubt Monkeymother, a.k.a. Posh Totty, will correct me if I'm wrong; she was virtually in the Royal Ballet when she was a gel.) I promise you it'll catch on in no time, particularly once everyone works out that exchanging kisses for a firm handshake will save up to 3.6 billion working hours a year.