Fiona McCade: Love letters in the age of Nuts

"SHALL I compare thee to a Summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, but phwoar, I'm gonna give you a good seeing to, you smokin' bit of hot totty."

Now, can you see where, in this early draft of his 18th sonnet, Shakespeare went wrong? Women, I'm assuming it's an easy question; men, some of you may need a bit of help, especially if your name is John Williamson and you were put on the sex offenders register last week by Perth Sheriff Court for sending a "love" letter to a female neighbour.

I have to put the "love" bit in inverted commas, because if you read it, you'll probably come to the conclusion, as the recipient did, that Williamson's declaration of interest hardly makes the grade in that category.

It started off pleasantly enough. Since he'd only admired her from afar and they had never met, he began by reassuring her that he wasn't a stalker. He said that he had a crush on her and asked her for a date.

Best leave it there, you'd think, but no, he went further – much further – using increasingly sexual references, explaining how she made him "so horny" he "couldn't help" himself and that he wanted a reply "and I mean pronto, because I'm gagging for you".

The recipient, a 21-year-old single mother, was scared enough to report the letter to the police, not only because of the less-than-delicate sentiments expressed, but because this catalogue of carnal frustration from a total stranger had been hand-delivered through her door while she popped out for five minutes.

Williamson's lawyers are moaning that he's simply not very good at expressing himself and has "poor judgment", but he's not some hormonally-challenged, tongue-tied teenager who's never put pen to paper before, he's 33 years old.

How on Earth could he get to that age and still think this might be a good, romantic, opening gambit? How was he brought up? What sort of films does he watch (I'm guessing he's never seen Casablanca)? What does he read (if anything)? Who has he been out with in the past to enable him to hone such a remarkable brand of seduction, and how much did they charge him?

Williamson obviously isn't one of the really bad guys, just a really bad writer, but he is probably the sort of thoughtless bloke who walks right behind you along a dark street and, when you start running, yells: "It's OK! I'm not a rapist! I was just looking at your bum!"

Unfortunately, he's not unusual. A regular diet of rap lyrics (which have reinvented "bitch" and "ho" as terms of endearment) and wall-to-wall porn seems to have convinced a whole generation of men that women will respond eagerly to just about any come-on, however crude and charmless, and that we are always grateful for it.

In fact, in the scheme of things, Williamson was Blairgowrie's answer to Robert Browning – he wrote about his feelings, with real ink, on real paper, rather than merely texting "I want that pussy" to a lady fair, as one footballer apparently did recently.

But curiously, although Williamson cared enough to sit down and get out the Basildon Bond, he doesn't seem to have understood, or implemented, any of the great advantages of letter-writing.

Composing a letter – especially a love letter – should surely involve thought and reflection. It gives you a chance to mull things over and consider exactly what you want to say in the best possible way. You can take time to make your suit look more attractive. You have the luxury of being able to read and reread your scribblings until you're sure you've taken out all references to genitalia. You can do mushy, sentimental things, such as dropping in the odd quote from Cyrano de Bergerac, or maybe spelling "whore" properly instead of just "ho". You know, make a real effort.

But what did Williamson do? He sent out the literary equivalent of sticking his head through his beloved's letterbox and shouting: "Oi! You! Show us yer knickers! I know where you live!"

Yes, it's tough that one rather misjudged letter got Williamson on to the sex offenders register, but if it makes just one other bloke think twice before posting off an envelope full of similarly crass, self-indulgent drivel, it won't have been in vain.

And if you can judge a man by his letters – as Perth Sheriff Court obviously did – Williamson's future girlfriends should know that while his letter starts out tenderly enough, it descends into vulgarity. Apparently, when it comes to romance, this man can't keep it up.