Tony Parsons - Tony Parsons on Life, Death and Breakfast

It never really ends. If childhood is ripe for humiliation, then so is puberty. And young manhood is stuffed with humiliating moments – losing a fight I remember as being particularly humiliating. It might not have been the Thriller in Manila, but it mattered desperately to me. Yet being beaten physically is nothing to the damage you receive psychologically. Sticks and head butts can break your bones, but it is the abject humiliation that really hurts.

What must old age be like? An endless series of doctors peering up your back passage and asking you to cough and telling you to put your trousers back on.

But you can’t!

Because the doctor has hidden them!

In the never-ending battle to be the best a man can be, the twenty-first century male is confronted by the same question again and again – where to draw the line?

Laser surgery to correct imperfect eyesight, cosmetic dentistry to give you a perfect smile – this is now the kind of routine self-improvement that we get done in our lunch break. But-where does it end? Or doesn’t it?

Over the last year I have had two red-blooded heterosexual males inform me that they plan to invest in a bottom-lift – which is exactly the same as a face-lift, but south of the border, down Mexico way. And to me – sorry – that just feels like a self-improvement too far.

Yet there is no denying that men are missing out on a lot of the things that women take for granted, and that make them healthier, happier and lovelier. And don’t men have the right to be healthier, happier and lovelier too?

What about the facial? To many men – for example, me – the facial has always been on the dark side of what is acceptable for a man. A bit too poncy. A tad too girly. Which just goes to show how far men still have to go.

Your dad and uncles would have reacted to a man-facial with distrust. Well, I have been to the mountain, and I have had a facial – and I see at last what I have been missing for years.

This just in – real men get facials.

As fallible, neurotic, profoundly messed-up human beings, we all have an insatiable appetite for self-improvement.

Or is that just me?

I am shocked and disturbed to discover that for every Penguin Classic or slim volume of poetry on my shelves, I seem to own many more books on getting rich, getting laid, getting fit, losing weight, winning fights, raising daughters, stopping smoking, starting a language and treating your own knees. I am a sucker for self-improvement, a junkie for self-help, a crack whore of self-motivation.

Or is that just my library?

But everywhere I look there is evidence of a pathological obsession for being richer, tougher, thinner, smarter, fitter and – above all – better.

There are books by world-renowned experts here. Captain W.E. Fairbairn’s 1942 martial arts classic Get Tough! How to win in hand-to-hand fighting as taught to the British commandos and the U.S Armed Forces. And oh look – there is the babe-magnet bible, How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed by sex guru Ross Jeffries. And right next to it I see How to Get Rich by Donald Trump. There’s The Prince by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War , books about Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Creative Visualisation and how to end a street fight with just one blow.

But do I really need this stuff? And has it done me any good? Does it do anyone any good?

Not all the self-improvement texts I own are by some certified genius in his field. I also have a large collection of books by charlatans, nutjobs and nobodies. I own books about getting rich by people who are not rich but in jail. But when it comes to improving myself, I seem disturbingly willing to suspend belief. I am like a country hick queuing up to see the bearded lady, the mug punter who can’t see when the cards are marked, a sucker for that snake oil.

I am even starting to doubt the experts. Captain W.E. Fairbairn invented the Fairbairn Commando knife and is the father of modern hand-to-hand combat. Anyone with fire in the blood should own a copy of Get Tough

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