6 SEPTEMBER 1975, Page 14

Spectator peregrinations

My elegant but anachronistic colleague Tom Puzzle was slightly offended by my recent mention of battery-powered fans for cooling the arm-pits. He is himself a devotee of the more ornate old-fashioned fan and asks me to give it a plug (his pun, not mine). London theatres, full of sweating foreigners, are quite unbearable in the summer without a fan. Yet whenever he produces one of these exotic. instruments in public, he is molested by undesirable characters. How can they be made more socially acceptable? He has two Indonesian fans and one from Taiwan, one at home, one in the office and one in the car. Look out.