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Jonathan Ross has courted controversy before but the chat-show host has sparked a particularly lively debate by admitting how rarely he showers.

“I resent the fact that I have to shower,” he told the “Parenting Hell” podcast, saying that he sometimes goes “at least a week without showering”. He said his wife, Jane Goldman, is the same, leaving them “like a couple of hamsters in their own straw in that bed”.

‘Goblin mode’

“Becoming a member of the great unwashed never felt so on-trend,” said Helen Coffey in The Independent. She admitted to feeling “secretly vindicated” after Ross spoke out because, while she “used to be more scrupulous” when she was a full-time office worker, she now works from home three days a week and showering “feels less of a necessity”.

These days, she is tempted to go “full goblin mode”, which is defined by Oxford University Press as “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”.

Coffey said that “amid the proliferation of wellness culture, clean living and more lotions and potions than any of us could ever need, there’s something refreshing about someone in the spotlight holding their hands up and saying that, hey, they’re happy to be just a little bit gross”.

There are times when a shower is necessary, said Robert Crampton in The Times, “especially in the summer, or after a run, or if you work on the bins”. But mostly “you don’t really” need one and some “judicious flannel work will suffice”, because “getting fully naked and fully wet is a faff”.

‘Grim hygiene standards’

Ross has waded into a long-standing debate. In 2015, Professor Stephen Shumack, president of the Australasian College of Dermatologists, told The Sydney Morning Herald that “it’s only in the last 50 to 60 years” that the idea of a daily shower has “become commonplace” and “the pressure to do that is actually social pressure rather than actual need”.

But the “much-touted theory” that if you stop washing your hair with shampoo it cleans itself may not be accurate, said Coffey. She quoted Anabel Kingsley, a trichologist from the Philip Kingsley clinic in London, who said that if you don’t wash regularly, your hair and scalp “are likely to become coated in dirt, smelly, greasy and flaky”, with a “build-up of yeasts and bacteria”.

Ross’s admission is “jaw-dropping” and “stomach churning” said The Mirror. After learning of his “grim hygiene standards”, some have “taken to social media to slam the television personality”, said the tabloid, including a “repulsed” fan who said: “Yuk. No wonder his TV show guests sit so far away from him.”

Coffey concluded that showering less often, “provided you keep fundamentals clean (groin, face, underarms)”, won’t do any harm, so “why not press pause on the judgement, embrace your inner hamster and go full goblin mode”.

It’s a divisive issue but perhaps everyone can agree there is a limit. Amou Haji, an Iranian hermit dubbed the “world’s dirtiest man”, died aged 94 in 2022 – after going 60 years without washing with water or soap.