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I GRASPED a nettle once, in the interests of research, and it stung like hell. So much for folk wisdom. Maybe the 18th-century writer Aaron Hill failed to perform this basic experiment before he wrote his influential verse: “Tender-hearted stroke a nettle,/ And it stings you for your pains;/ Grasp it like a man of mettle/ And it soft as silk remains.”

Or maybe it was a question of technique. Perhaps a slight mettle deficiency prevented me grasping the plant quite hard enough: unlike the former Sunderland football manager Howard Wilkinson, who once famously used a bag of nettles during a team talk against Liverpool.