“I would like to buy some tennis balls please.” I say to the man behind the counter at my local sports shop.

“Certainly Sir, for what surface would that be?” he enquired helpfully.

“Oh, I am not sure, whatever is on the inside of a tumble drier I suppose.”

After looking at me like I was the first person ever to ask for tennis balls to help with the laundry he agreed to go and get his most tumble-drier friendly tennis balls. The tube did not say they were safe for tumble-driers, but the man assured me they would be fine.

He would know. After all he was the professional in this transaction.

This all came about after accidentally leaving my big winter coat in the kitchen of our ski chalet a few weeks ago, it now reeks of cooking and assorted kitchen paraphernlia. It is not a pleasant odour.

I was planning to wash it at home and just hang it up like I would any other jacket or coat, but it says quite clearly on the care instructions that it must be tumble dried with two tennis balls. As someone who does not own either a tumble drier, or two tennis balls, this presented me with a problem.

The tumble drier issue is easily resolved as there is a launderette a few hundred yards from my flat, just like in Eastenders, but I am forced to buy tennis balls as a brief telephone call the launderette confirmed that they do not, and will not, hire tennis balls by the hour, despite my tennis ball-less pleading. I briefly considered using golf balls, of which I have many, but I was concerned by the potential for damage to my coat.

What I do not understand is why the care instructions mandate the use of tennis balls? I have asked around, and am amazed to learn that the addition of tennis balls to a tumble drier is not the unusual instruction I had first thought.

Have you ever deliberately put a tennis ball into a tumble drier?

I am genuinely suspicious that Slazenger have been lobbying clothing manufacturers to include the use of tennis balls on all clothing care labels. There are many more coats in the UK than tennis courts, so it makes good commercial sense doesn’t it? It is a plot like something off of BBC 2’s Dragon’s Den.

After all, I was not going to buy any tennis balls, and now I have bought four, yet I am about as likely to play tennis in the next few months as I am to have sex with Fearne Cotton (Fearne, if you are Googling yourself and have found this, then Hello, I am not averse to taking up tennis, if it will help with the sex thing).

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