Show me a man whose hands haven’t hovered in temptation over a pert female derrière and I’ll show you a man without a pulse.

It’s part of the red-blooded male DNA to want to touch what we like to see, but social cues and the laws of civilized behaviour stop us from doing so.

Not for a moment do I believe that Austin Cowburn, the Manchester businessman charged with groping a woman’s bottom in a Singapore nightclub should remain unpunished if found guilty. However, as reported in yesterday’s M.E.N, facing being lashed with a cane is one bottom smacking too far.

However, while no man should ever touch a woman if she doesn’t want him to, what of the women who love to run feline fingers over the male form in a gesture of flirtation or office playfulness?

In my mind, there is a staggering inequality between what men are permitted to do and what women get away with. And it’s about time the playing field was levelled.

I spent 16 years at a law firm being ‘man handled’ by a paralegal. I know, it sounds pathetic. Surely I must have enjoyed the fact that most days she’d pinch my bottom or try to slip her hand into places as private as my clients’ files. I didn’t like it or encourage it, I liked her as a friend, but I didn’t want her to do it.

So every time she did, I’d tell her to stop. But it only ended when I left the firm.

Had the tables been turned, I’d have had my backside kicked all the way to a tribunal and probably the courts. End of career. But because I’m a man I’m expected to endure – no, even enjoy – it.

Only last week, two builders were kicked off a council development after wolf-whistling a woman as she walked by. Her angry husband sent a stinging email to North Herts district council complaining that his wife was sexually harassed and that she felt intimidated and distraught.

A ridiculous reaction since many women are doubtless flattered when they hear the sound of an appreciative workman floating through the air. What’s more, women constantly feel they have a licence to play the flirtatious kitten in terms of touchy feely body language – Diet Coke built a whole advertising campaign on the back of this, when a group of office girls took a break to watch a hot builder knock down a can of fizzy drink.

Imagine if the roles had been reversed and a bunch of shirts and suits all gathered at the window to watch a pretty secretary on her tea break.

It’s time men and women stood at the same touchline. Equality means all of us keeping our hands to ourselves and our whistles away from work. And a smacked bottom to anyone who doesn’t.

Vet visits gave my poor Pippa the needle

Every month a Birmingham-based vet comes to my house on a Sunday to give my old Stafford acupuncture. Pippa (that’s the dog, not the vet), is 14 and ravaged with arthritis and the treatment seems to loosen her joints and increase mobility.

The acupuncture works wonders but she hates having 20 needles stuck into her legs and back – it makes her shake, pant and go weak at the knees.

This weekend, after six years of treatment Pippa rebelled. The vet came in, but as soon as her back was turned, my dog shot off into the back garden and hid in the bushes. It took us 15 minutes to find her camouflaged in the undergrowth. Too smart to be lured out by the offer of tasty treats, the acupuncture was abandoned. The vet was sent away, tail between her legs.

I know in these straitened times that giving your dog a dose of holistic medicine might sound extravagant. Many are still reeling from news that fashion designer Alexander McQueen left £50,000 in his will so his dogs can be pampered for the rest of their lives.

But Pippa has been a loyal, comforting, intelligent and loving companion. (Staffords are a wonderful, yet much maligned breed.) Compared to the cost of some canine acupuncture, that is priceless.

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