"Doctor, doctor - is that a Bugs Bunny tie that you’re wearing?"

"No, you carrot, it’s Bugs C.difficile & MRSA!"

I gather that the British Medical Association has told doctors to stop playing around with their ties. It seems they are for ever doing a hand-job on the knot, or scraping the pointy bit across pernicious pockets of pathogens.

The BMA Board of Science has called for drastic action - if you can’t stop fiddling with fashion, Doctor, then cut it off. Because ties, the report so arrogantly claims, "perform no beneficial function in patient care".

Rubbish! Have these quacks never met a real patient? Rather than meet our doctor’s eye, we fixate upon his tie. Such a fetish feast of focalistic frotteurism!

Medics at the big London Hospitals wear overstretched Rugger Club ties; ageing Family Practitioners wear the ‘Simpsons’ tie their children gave them on their 40th. Absence of design is associated with older academics who dote on dour greys and navy blues. Floral art is a speciality of those working in STI clinics, whilst an abstract aberration is a sure sign of a specialisation in mental health (or cruelty). The young man with his eye on wealthy private patients will cultivate a city banker look, sporting stripy louche lesions.

So come on, Doctor, just take that tie to the cleaners and let it come back for a final fling. Because one day the BMA will go one step further and tell you to remove more than just your neckwear before inviting us to relax and say "Aaaahhh!"