Forgotten gurus: Lionel Stebbing

“Be tall”; “Robust health”; “Manly strength”; “Double your stamina”. Through the 1920s and 30s, advertisements for the Stebbing System in comics and magazines tantalised boys and young men with the prospect of a rock-hard, muscle-bound and lofty manhood. Much the kind of vision dangled before men today in Men’s Health magazine. 

“Your height increased in 14 days or money back” promised Lionel Stebbing, who called himself a personal consultant in body building and health practitioner. “I positively guarantee to give you perfect health and double your stamina in 30 days or return your money in full.”

All you had to do was send Mr Stebbing five shillings, then simply adhere to the suggestions Mr Stebbing sent to you in the form of a typewritten “4-in-1 supercourse”.  The course was a mere matter of meeting his daily requirement over the course of two weeks: 27 exercises, two and a half hours outdoors, relaxing, smiling, never bearing a grudge, drinking a quart of milk, eating fruit, vegetables and dripping, taking patent vitamins, deep breathing exercises, muscle control movements, bathing in Stebbing bath revitaliser... and much much more.

Sound advice perhaps (apart from the dripping) – but could a young lad’s life possibly accommodate so much healthy activity in 14 days?  

But Mr Stebbing was no fool. A man of many talents, his other publications included: “The Secret of Beautiful Magnetic Eyes”, “Stronger Sight without Glasses”, “How to Develop a Perfect Voice”, “Music, it’s Occult Basis and Healing Value” and “The Correction of Stammering”.  

It was only when he neared the end of his career, in the 1960s, that he let the cat out of the bag about his own dubious expertise in all these matters, when he published two little business books candidly titled: “How I made a fortune with a home mail order business” and “How you can build a second income fortune at home without special skill or expertise”. 

Yes, all Mr Stebbing’s endeavours selling his skills were made without any skill – apart from entrepreneurial, creative and typewriting ones – from his small semi-detached house at 28, Dean Road in Willesden, London – a house you can still see to this day. Alas there is no blue plaque.

A letter to Bill Bailey part 2: the scary bits

Dear Bill Bailey

Hyena Reality/Free Digital Photos

Here is my (probably not) much-awaited second letter to you. As you’ll remember, I’ve got worries about the messages that Prostate Cancer UK is putting out as part of their Men United campaign – a campaign that, with your involvement, is already having widespread coverage on television, in print media and online.

Prostate Cancer UK – and in particular its Chief Executive Owen Sharp –  has taken to saying as part of the campaign that “by 2030, prostate cancer will be the most common cancer”. Scary.

It’s certainly a useful message to spread if you’re an organisation that wants to raise awareness and lots of money – make prostate cancer have the same sort of public impact as breast cancer. 

Unfortunately, it’s also badly misleading to the public. Money shouldn’t be raised by throwing around convenient statistics to frighten people, when they are only a small part of a complex picture.

The figure much quoted by PCUK comes from a study in the British Journal of Cancer in 2011, which predicted that prostate cancer incidence among men would rise 2% between 2007 and 2030 (doesn’t sound quite so frightening does it?). 

It also stated that, although the estimated rise in cases of prostate is partly attributable to an ageing population, it is also the result of more and more men having PSA tests, uncovering disease that wouldn’t previously have ever been known about.

The authors give an explicit warning: “There is considerable uncertainty,” they say, “in predicting prostate cancer incidence, which is being driven not only by an inherent increase in risk of the disease, but also by the over-diagnosis (and over-treatment) as a consequence of testing with PSA.” 

In other words, increased awareness of prostate cancer causes more prostate cancer. Men Utd, ironically, will raise the incidence of prostate cancer.

I hope you understand that there is no way I want to belittle prostate cancer and its impact. My father died of it, I am at higher risk than most men. But Prostate Cancer UK and Movember (which have been increasingly closely aligned) want to make prostate cancer into a men’s version of breast cancer – same high profile, same kind of campaigns, same fundraising clout – without learning the lessons from breast cancer, without thinking how prostate cancer is different than breast cancer, and without thinking about the costs of getting things wrong. The cost, unfortunately, will be a very large number of men suffering unnecessarily. 

If PCUK really wants to help men it needs to be responsible. It needs to recognise that powerful fundraising messages aren’t the same as valuable public education messages. I hope you will discuss this with them.

Thank you for reading this. Now I will leave you alone to be wonderful, funny and inspiring again.

Simon