By some distance, the best sporting story of the week involves the little known British tennis player Harriet Dart. During a recent match against the French player Lois Boisson, she complained about her opponent’s body odour. “Can you tell her to wear deodorant“, she enquired of the umpire, “because she smells really bad?” Perhaps the alleged smell from across the net explained why Dart lost narrowly – 6-0, 6-3 – and not because she was crap at tennis? Either way, it’s the best excuse for getting battered in a sporting event that I have heard for a long time.
It’s fair to point out that Dart did row back on her comments once they appeared on social media.“Hey everyone, I want to apologise for what I said on court today, it was a heat-of-the-moment comment that I truly regret,” she grovelled. “That’s not how I want to carry myself, and I take full responsibility. I have a lot of respect for Lois and how she competed today. I’ll learn from this and move forward. But my God, she stank to high heaven.” I made up the last bit but it is worth pointing out in her apology that she didn’t withdraw the bit about her smelly opponent. She was just sorry that she got found out for saying it.
Being called out for being a smelly person is an extremely embarrassing thing to happen. I remember round 45 years ago working with a lovely man who had a stoma and people were queueing up to complain about the smell. A manager felt the need to take him aside to point it out to him. As soon as it happened, everyone felt terrible, but no one more so than the poor man himself. It was not his fault that he had needed major life-saving surgery that necessitated the fitting of a stoma. I’ve never forgotten the shame I felt at the time and I like to think I have learned from it.
Indeed, I worked with countless people who suffered from odour issues and did nothing about it. One person, I recall, had a dreadful skin condition which caused a smell and a number of others – and how do I say this politely? – didn’t change their clothes often enough or even wash. But one incident stuck in my mind and changed the way I dealt with body odours. It was when a close friend told me I stank.
It was in the late 1980s and I was staying with friends in Manchester during a trade union conference. I came down for breakfast one morning and was taken to one side by my friend who told me in no uncertain terms that hers was a non-smoking house, that I should not be smoking in the bedroom or anywhere else and, more hurtful than anything, I reeked of tobacco, especially my breath. I was mortified, embarrassed and humiliated. Any thoughts of, “How dare you say that?” were immediately replaced by, “Do I really smell that bad?” The answer, clearly, was an unqualified yes. So, what could I do about it?
One answer was to wash more. The next would be to change my clothes more often. Another would be to travel everywhere with mouthwash or chewing gum. The more drastic solution would be to deal with the main issue at source and stop smoking. On 31st December 1993, I did just that. As my sense of smell returned, I soon realised that my friend was right. When I was with people who smoked, I noted how bad their breath smelled, how their clothes carried the aroma of tobacco, how everywhere they went carried around the simple fact that they were smokers. Helpfully, it made it far easier to quit smoking permanently, too. Soon, it got to the point where I loathed the smell of cigarettes.
There was a permanent effect, too. I’m not a cleanliness freak in the OCD sense, but ever since that collision with reality, that I could stink with the worst of them, made me change my ways. I’d like to think I have always been a clean person but now I know I am. The slightest hint of body odour in clothes and they are straight in the washing basket. I even use mouthwash if I require the bathroom in the middle of the night, for fear of how stale my breath has become overnight. I even change my pants and socks every week, whether I need to or not. (Just kidding. It’s every month.)
I don’t think I could ever be as blunt in my criticism of smelly people as Ms Dart, whose expensive private education (how unusual for a top British sportsperson) may have taught her a few things, but clearly not social etiquette, nor indeed the talent to be a top tennis player. If she had a point, perhaps there are other ways to point out the odour challenges of others and perhaps blurting out one’s feelings to a tennis umpire may not be the best way. Having said that, my friend pointing out my own failings ultimate proved to be a lesson learned and one I have never forgotten. Telling me I smelled “really bad“, or words to that effect, had the necessary result. And embarrassing though it was, I’ll always feel grateful to her.
