Naked at Lunch review – the funny thing about nudism

Mark Haskell Smith’s undercover view of nudism is both thoughtful and hilarious

This is a book about nudists enjoying themselves, but it’s also about people finding nudists threatening. As we all know, nudism is only an erection away from open-air group sex. One minute it’s volleyball, the next it’s people heading for the sand dunes, and the fall of western civilisation. And what about hygiene? Yes, by all means factor in the benign setting of a consenting nudist-resort bakery and the reassuring porn-led trend, especially among nudists, for scrupulous pubic baldness, but frankly we all know the full range of what private parts are used for. And while we’re at it – really, have these people no dignity?

Doubtless all this is why nudism is so funny, even to those of us who have only dared walk naked up and down Oxford Street in the service of our nightmares. It’s telling that the author is scarcely three sentences into this highly entertaining work before he finds himself inescapably typing “scrotum”, long acknowledged as the most amusing word in the Oxford English Dictionary.

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