Until this week cellists worldwide had reason to fear a terrible malady. Worse than fiddler’s neck, flautist’s chin or even the dreaded guitarist’s nipple was the condition known as “cello scrotum”.
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Nearly all such reviews referred to a letter to the journal in 1974 from John Murphy, husband of Dr Elaine Murphy, who noted that he had once come across a case of cello scrotum. But Dr Elaine Murphy, now Baroness Murphy, has now admitted that the letter she drafted with her husband was a hoax, a practical joke that the couple have been “dining out on” ever since.

In a letter to the BMJ, prompted by yet another reference to the ailment in the journal last month, the couple wrote: “Perhaps after 34 years it’s time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum.”
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“You would have to be doing something fairly extreme to get that by playing the cello,” he said.

He suggested that any such performance would not be tolerated in polite society. “Otherwise, given the angle of the cello, you would have to have pretty enormous bollocks,” he said.

The mythical condition could even have helped with the recruitment of new cellists. “I think it’s always good if there is a bit of mystique about an instrument,” he said. “Danger can make things more exciting. This may have been a mixed blessing.”