His attitude was: if he comes out of there with his head still attached then I’ve done my job.

All these years on, do I do it in the right way? I don’t know. Call me weird but I’ve never shaved with another man. Do other chaps do the moustache region first? That’s the way I do it but, then again, when I’m ironing a shirt I tackle the yoke first, which I guess is the same thing.

Maybe the men who iron their sleeves first also do the sides of their face first? I don’t know. The research has simply not been done.

I also wonder if other men “go against the grain”? Apparently it’s verboten – creating all sorts of calamities – but has anyone ever had a clean shave without doing it?

“Richard, why don’t you just ask your mates? They’ll tell you.”

Well, maybe. But don’t you think it would be a bit weird?

First, the conversation starter: “How about those Panthers! What a magnificent victory over, um, you know, the other team!”

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Then, soon after: “By the way, asking for a friend, how do you shave? With the grain or against the grain? And do you do the moustache bit first or last?”

For all I know, other chaps just rub Nair Hair Removal Cream on their faces and let it do the work. I read that “Nair gently removes hair and leaves your skin silky-smooth”, which sounds a lot better than my daily battle with the razor. After all, 23 million Australian women can’t be wrong.

As for Samuel Johnson, he established many of the varieties of shaving: “Holding the razor more or less perpendicular; drawing long or short strokes; beginning at the upper part of the face, or the under; at the right side or the left side.”

His conclusion, according to Boswell’s account: “Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished”.

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Johnson could have said the same thing about everything else in the bathroom. Is the toilet paper folded or clumped? Is the toothbrush rubbed side to side or up and down? Do you really leave the conditioner on for the three minutes it says on the packet, or are you the sort of radical who has been conditioned to break the rules?

And if there’s a sliver of soap, but also a fresh bar, both lurking on the soap dish, which do you choose to use?

Personally, I pick the sliver and try to use it all, which may provide an overly frank insight into my personality problems. Oh, for the confidence and glorious self-esteem that would allow you to use the fresh bar, leaving the sliver for someone else.

Every item in the bathroom is an instant study in personalities. Who needs the Myers-Briggs personality test, with its 130 rather confusing questions?

Just ask people to make a frank record of their behaviour in the bathroom, from toilet paper to soap bar, and you’d have a complete insight into their personality.

An insight, that is, into the real person – the one that exists in that rare place in which we are alone and unobserved.

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