Give me a break

It started with some junk mail. I threw it out: I gave no consideration to the fact that it was addressed to a Miss Phyllis Henshaw. I put it down to some glitch in the address-sharing industry. But then the telephone calls started. The first one was from a business I’d always been rather unhealthily intrigued by: the photographic makeover studio. ‘Could I speak to Miss Phyllis Henshaw, please?’ the voice said. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake,’ I said. ‘This is Philip Hensher. There isn’t a Phyllis Henshaw.’ ‘Ah,’ she said, before starting on her scripted spiel. ‘I don’t think you understand,’ I said, in the manner of the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima refusing to dance with George Brown. ‘In the first place, I’m not a woman. In the second place, I am not in need of a makeover, or, being ginger, possibly beyond one. And in the third place I rather object to being phoned up like this.’