In these troubled times, we need all the heroes we can get, and the BBC Two dating show, Would Like To Meet Again, provided one the other day in the form of Jon Massey.

The engaging bachelor from Plymouth has since found love in the intervening six years, but the producers first picked up on his story when he was living on a diet of chicken and chips, displaying a penchant for leather trousers and still a virgin at the age of 41.

But these weren't the only qualities that made him endearing. When the programme's makeover specialists encouraged him to have a massage, so that he might experience female contact for the first time in 20 years, he told them to “bugger off”.

At the salon it took 40 minutes of nagging for him to agree to have his hands massaged and then, after yet more cajoling, he conceded to a shoulder rub, but remained fully clothed throughout. What a guy!

Indeed, of all the excesses of the past decade - mindless debt, bankers' bonuses and so on - the rise of “the massage” has surely been the most disconcerting. Not least because, in my (bad) experience, massages cause more stress than they alleviate.

One of these experiences took place in 2006, when - while researching an article about the Royal Automobile Club - I spent a week sampling the various members' club services, which included a rubdown at the hands of a masseur whose interpretation of the adjective “deep”, in relation to the kneading of body tissue, appeared to have been taken from Deep Impact, the asteroid movie. At the end of it, I didn't know whether to offer thanks or file charges.

More recently, I had a back massage at Champneys, which might have been relaxing were it not for the fact that the spa chain's 48-year-old co-owner was sprawled out on a massage table next to me, talking about profit margins (for an interview), and a smirking Times photographer was taking pictures of us as he did so.

But such pampering is fraught with awkwardness even when there isn't a colleague watching and sniggering at your physical inadequacies. Massage etiquette is utterly bewildering. Is it homophobic to request a woman? Can you object to the music playing in the background? Is it OK to fall asleep? If it hurts, can you yelp? Or cry? What if you're ticklish? Should you take your underwear off or leave it on?

This last question is particularly troublesome. And despite having spent several hours reading around the subject, I still have no idea what you are meant to do. According to the Sunday Times Travel section, “about 99.9 per cent of therapists prefer you naked”. But according to The News Journal, a regional American newspaper, “most people get down to their underwear”. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Daily asserts that “a professional spa provides its guests with disposable underwear during a spa treatment”.

And I'm not the only one who is confused. According to the agony aunt section of one newspaper's travel section, a therapist gave a client a pair of paper panties, left the room and returned to find the client sporting said pants on her head. And then, a few years ago, the actor Kevin Costner was accused of exposing himself to a masseuse at a hotel spa, before performing what has been described as “an unspeakable act of ‘self-dating'”.

Costner has always denied the allegation, but the headlines demonstrated the most worrying thing about the modern massage: the boundaries between the seedy “parlour” and the respectable “spa” have blurred. It used to be straightforward. If the building had blacked-out windows, you were in the former; if you could see through them, then you were in the latter.

But a friend of mine was recently offered “extras” while visiting one of the poshest hotel spas in Asia, while Times Online recently published a piece about how even women are being offered “happy endings” - and then there was the traumatic experience I endured in India ...

I'll keep it brief, because it's not pleasant to recall. I was staying with a female friend in a posh hotel in Delhi, and asit was too hot to do anything or go anywhere, she suggested that we visit the hotel spa. I conceded, and was allocated a mustachioed masseur who immediately began pummelling me with great ferocity, and because he didn't understand my Punjabi, and I couldn't follow his Hindi, he didn't respond to my plea for him to ease off.

But then, horrifically, the kneading became too light, and much too intimate. At this point he uttered the words: “You like?” I emitted a noise that I thought conveyed “NO!”, but which he interpreted as “carry on”, and he did so until he realised that it was having no effect. Incredibly, at the end of it all - because I'm British, and so will endure anything (up to and including molestation), to avoid a scene, and also because I'm the child of Indian immigrants, and therefore tormented with guilt about my wealth relative to that of Indian workers - I gave him a tip.

I dealt with the episode at the time by trying to wipe it from my memory, but now Jon Massey has inspired me to speak out against the absurd, self-indulgent explosion in pampering that leads to such horrors. Enough is enough. Appearing nude in front of strangers may be fine for Scandinavians, who grow up with an easy acceptance of the naked body, but entire generations of the Royal Family were conceived without the removal of clothes, uptightness is a great British trait and, frankly, it's time that the pampering specialists out there were told to keep their hands to themselves.
sathnam@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• Police beg us for food. What hope is there?
• Moral darkness that engulfed Baby P
• More to Advent than cheap chocolate