We need to talk about Kevin Spacey

I am looking for a way to get £80,000. The sum would come in handy. I could put it towards buying a cottage on Saint Helena, a seat in the House of Lords or dinner in central London. The problem is that I’m stumped for ways to get it.

Happily, this week’s news brings inspiration and I now realise that in order to make the necessary sum I will need someone – perhaps a dedicated reader? – to sing a Victoria Wood song at me in a suggestive, if not lewd, fashion.

For anyone who has not kept up with global events lately, I am referring to the case of Sam Nunns, who last week successfully sued his former employer, the manager of the Windermere Manor Hotel. Mr Nunns was the head chef at the establishment. He no longer is, after he sued over a number of incidences of ‘sexual harassment’ at the charming Lake District hotel.

One of these was the hotel’s manager singing the late Victoria Wood’s masterpiece ‘The Ballad of Barry and Freda’. For anyone who doesn’t know it, this riff on ‘Let’s Do It’ is probably the late comedienne’s most famous song. It includes the impeccable lines ‘This folly/ Is jolly/ Bend me over backwards on my hostess trolley’. It neatly sums up the English attitude towards sex, which is that it is essentially something to be giggled at when referred to at all.

But Mr Nunns did not giggle. On another occasion he had been touched once on his thigh, and on another on his nipple, he says. Then the hotel manager sang Victoria Wood at him suggestively and that was about it. An employment tribunal awarded him enough money to buy a hostess trolley every day for the next year.