This is something I take with a pinch of salt ! It’s just not possible …
Thoughts/anectdotes welcomed, after all it makes a change fro Brexit ! 
What did he study at Harvard and Princeton, maybe it was not a science, maybe just an accountant.
or one of the other ‘unwashed’ variety 
I do think there’s something to be said for letting kids (once they’ve learned to walk and toddle about safely) get into dirty, germy places, and get minor scuffs, scrapes and bumps on the way.
This builds up immunological resilience and helps kids to learn how to navigate the environment in relative safety.
All animals learn prudence and ‘harden themselves off’ naturally, and are canny about fire, sharps, deep holes, heights and fast-moving water by instinct, and from their peers.
Mothers also know how to set boundaries and keep an eye in their young by instinct, and animal fur et mesure. But excessive media and out-of-context social interference has swamped these attributes, and taken away their self-assurance.
I grew up in a more holistic and permissive world in its approach to child rearing. My mum used to wipe my face with a corner of her pinafore wet with a bit of spit. I remember how it smelled, and I used to wriggle and grimace but it created a unique bond at a crucial time in my life.
Mothers do it all over the world.
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Of course Peter when we are children we wallow in mud, eat coal, and stuff all sorts of things like earth in our mouth. At the end of the day though we are washed and put to bed !
This is an ‘adult’ who claims not to wash his hands … well frankly after using some of the public toilets I feel a need of an all over wash and not just my hands.
I just don’t believe his claims, when you have a shower or bath, or wash your hair you use your hands, so to state he never washes his hands is stupid!
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Maybe he just means he doesn’t wash his hands after having a pee/ poo.
Glad I’ll never have the misfortune to shake them.
Dirty bastard 
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I do agree Pete that a little dirt is nature’s vaccine…I can’t say as my 3 were ever meticulously turned out when they were little as they loved digging for worms and collecting beetles and swinging from a tyre tied to a tree in the back garden… they never had upset tummies as kids…
The only thing I was ever meticulous about and continue to be to this day was handling raw meat…I say meticulous but only to the point of avoiding cross contamination…not touching anything else before washing my hands after and washing utensils in hot soapy water…
As they became teenagers though and an upset stomach was a good way of getting the day off then anyone would have thought I was feeding them the raw meat and not my Collies…x 
My sick emoji for today…if I knew how to find it…would be awarded to Gavin Williamson…x
The hygiene hypothesis. There was a very interesting episode of Horizon on BBC 2 a few years ago about it
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Yes, Helen, I’m trying to envisage a truly compassionate, innocently intended and generous-minded equivalent of a bucket of cold sick. Not that I would ever pour it anywhere but down the sluice.
I once tipped an elderly genteman’s set of NHS dentures down the ward sluice when he submerged them in bowl of vomit. He obviously forgot to tell me… but I had to explain to Matron why I hadn’t seen them, and She Was Not Impressed.
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Maybe his Mum soaps him down, washes his hair, dries him a fluffy towel and uses a pom-pom to dust him all over with Johnson’s asbestos-free Baby Powder. My, doesn’t he smell good, and look at that little kiss-curl Mummy made for him.
Would Teddy like one too, or just a kiss from Pete (not this one!) before Mummy tucks him in? 
Sounds like you are speaking from experience Peter
I never got any of that treatment as a child, or even as an adult ! !
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In your dreams, Ann. My childhood was chilblains, hard boots, blood-curdling rows downstairs that I thought must be my five-year-old fault, and mother kept a cane hanging from the picture rail which came upstairs if she got upset with me.
Mais un gosse peut faire ses rêves, non ?
Never eat the complementary peanuts at a pub 
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I only ever take sweets off patients if they are wrapped or from certain people you know are okay. When my Auntie was in the nursing home her daughter would visit on Sunday and have a bad tummy on Monday , it was only when I said about sweets she realised why
He does say that his remarks were intended to be a joke and he was really having a go at those who obsess about germs.
We use a gel hand wash after going to the supermarket and then wash our hands when we get home.
There used to be saying that you had to have your peck of dirt to help your immunity to disease.
A link has been established between children whose immune systems are never challenged and asthma.
As usual, a common sense approach is best.