Nickie Muir: Struggling over tailgate ...

Prime Minister John Key. Photo / Mark Mitchell

I know I shouldn't but I'm still laughing over "tail-gate". The whole thing is so stupid it beggars belief but it is also strangely compelling.

I have spent a week trying to imagine Helen Clark getting excited about a bit of bald head rubbing or dreadlock tugging while out drinking coffee. I'm struggling.

A woman doing that would be dismissed from public office with a fair amount of disdain. What does it say about a culture that certain behaviours are tolerated or treated with contempt depending on whether or not the offender has a willy? It is difficult to imagine Julia Gillard giving her opinion on anything while wearing a bikini and yet Abbot is a serial offender in the budgie smuggler interview department.

The difference with Helen I guess is that she never felt the need to travel with a goon squad in the same way that John does. She'd hop off airplanes and into cars with a distinct absence of people with speakers and ear-pieces who look like they've been recruited from the car park of Destiny's church.

Key travels with a retinue of them and they hover, ever expectant shoulder to shoulder around their leader, drinking coffee indiscreetly at the three tables around him.

Perhaps Helen never felt the same need to protect herself from the New Zealand public.

My point - and I do have one, is that if she of the irresistible pony-tail turned round and smacked our leader one - which if you've asked nicely for someone to stop crashing your personal body space and they're not listening, would be justified, it is unlikely to have ended well for her or her pony-tail.

The goons have to justify their existence and she'd have been up on assault charges.

Perhaps after years of campaigning and breaking the force-field of personal space by randomly kissing babies and fulsomely shaking hands Key has forgotten, well, that not everyone likes him. I've almost forgiven the mad Latin for having a deep discussion on national TV nodding sagely with John at a World Cup rugby game. The Latin swears it wasn't his fault that his arms were being patted and hand clasped before he could back away. He always nods and looks serious when he has no idea what someone is saying.

If I ever meet John, I may try a bit of playful hair ruffling. It wouldn't be my fault because I have a stressful job and impulse control issues. My mate makes some pretty flash feijoa wine in half gallon sherry bottles that I could send him as a make-up if he got upset. In fact I think every woman should ruffle up the hair of every male member in their orbit this week just to join the general festivities and prove that we're not at all uptight about these things.

Unlike Winston, I'm not interested whether John's curtains match the carpet but you know - it would only be one step further for a quick check and now that body space is no longer sacred who would care? Certainly not Bronagh. She wasn't wearing the burka out of respect for Saudi traditions last week, she was just giving her pony tail some quiet time.