Jeremy Watson: Daughter No2, Malia and Frankie Cocozza...

IS ROMANCE dead for a generation used to the impersonality of smart phones, networking by laptop and the cold, dead hand of group messaging.

IS ROMANCE dead for a generation used to the impersonality of smart phones, networking by laptop and the cold, dead hand of group messaging. I’d like to think not though perhaps in this particular instance it would have been better if it were.

Picture the scene. Daughter No 2 is out for the night in Malia, once a tiny Cretan fishing village, but now a hedonistic oasis of delight for young ladies and gentlemen barely out of short trousers and long skirts but heavily into lining up the shots before a night of wild abandon. A tousle-haired lad – a ‘public relations consultant’ no less – has the job of persuading said young ladies to enter the bar of delights before another tousle-haired lad can convince them otherwise. Selling drinks to teenagers is a competitive business.

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Once inside, first tousle-haired lad, by way of introduction, lifts Daughter No 2 in the air – she’s as light as a feather – and tells her he fancies her. To her credit, on return to earth, she hotfoots it out the door. A good thing, I say, strictly from a father’s point of view. For the young man in question, as the world, or at least those who follow The X Factor know, is none other than Frankie Cocozza, whose main claim to fame is that he showed his bum on primetime television after boasting he had the names of seven girls he had met in Greece tattooed on his posterior and blew his chances of further stardom by partaking of cocaine. Now, as is my duty, I have examined pictures of young Coc-nozzas naked butt far more closely than I really wanted to for a name beginning with H and, I am pleased to relate, there isn’t one there. Not that I expected there would be of course, but someone had to check.

Clearly for at least seven girls, Frankie’s method of romancing was what they were seeking. But sometimes it’s the old-fashioned methods that melts a girl’s heart. Last month, Daughter No 2, at the height of Frankie’s downfall, was back from university studying at home and, as is often the case these days, had remained in her ‘onesie’, an all-in-one garment in which, apparently, you can sleep and slob around the house for upwards of three days. When her birthday arrived, she was, by her own admission, a bit smelly, with tousled hair of her own and wearing no make-up. Then the doorbell rang. On answering it there stood her boyfriend, who had unbeknown to her taken a train from Newcastle to Edinburgh, and, resplendent in his Vietnamese-made suit and tie – legacy of a journey they took together last summer – was proffering a huge bouquet of flowers. He took the next train back. But the boy will go far.