Join me and Say No To Brits In Shorts! And a hearty hello once again to readers (or just a reader?) in Ukraine and Turkey. What is it that brings you back again and again?

I have taken it into my head to do something worthwhile for a change, and once you have read this blog, I’m sure you’ll agree that what I hope to achieve is, perhaps, challenging, but eminently use-ful. It is quite simply this: to stop British men wearing shorts.

We don’t necessarily get good summers in Britain, and as all too often they are closer to a washout than not, we tend to remember the good days. It might sound daft to foreign readers, but get a group of British men and women together and you’ll find that when conversation flags a little, as it usually does in the hiatus between the booze running out and the chap sent to the off-licence to get some more not yet being back, talk will often turn to a trip down memory lane of all good weather we had. The afternoon of Tuesday, of June 23, 1998, and the weekend of September 18/19, 2004, are particular favourites and are fondly remembered. The fact that the French, Span-ish, Italians, Germans and the sorry rest of them don’t talk incessantly about the weather tells you that, on balance, summers are warm and sunny. Here in Britain they are not. But that makes no difference to the British men’s obsession with wearing shorts.

As soon as the really cold weather ends (although it doesn’t ever get ‘really cold’ in Britain in a great many parts of the country, despite the war stories folk like tell each other every winter and the excuses they make for ‘not being able to get to work, sorry, but it was totally, totally impossible, I mean I’ve never known anything like it’) it’s on with the shorts. (Incidentally, a light dusting of snow can’t of-ten count as a blizzard if it falls in Central London – I think I have previously reported – but the several metres of the stuff which do fall on the Peak District annually don’t count as ‘bad weather’ be-cause, well, the Peak District is some distance from Central London and not really deemed very important.)

Those shorts then stay on until well into October for the simple reason that it isn’t cold enough to take them off and replace them with something warmer, and the fool who finally gives in first is mercilessly teased by his friends, even though they are bloody glad he gave in because they can now, too. There is, of course, nothing

wrong with shorts themselves, it’s just that to date no Brit has ever – ever – had the legs to carry them off. I have no idea why, but your average Italian, German, Frenchman or Spaniard can be as ugly, fat and paunchy as you like, but the one distinct advantage they have over Brits is that the can wear shorts day in, day out with looking ineffably stupid.

We British excel at many things and lead the world in all kinds of areas: our lady folk are by far the easi-est lays in the world, I read yesterday that every last single Formula 1 team – Ferrari, Team Benet-ton, Red Bull, Mercedes – is staffed exclusively by British engineers even though the drivers might be foreign, and there’s absolutely no equal if you are looking for an in expensive, natural laxative than British cooking. But legs? Forget it? British legs are a joke. In colour they range from the traditional lily-white, through magnolia to deepest lobster pink.

When, as is the case with our New British, those who have arrived since the Sixties, that colour is a somewhat healthier mahogany to dark brown, they are still let down by shape, with those belonging to our New British of Asian descent often being especially spindly. The one exception to this rule, the legs of our New British of West Indian and African descent, sadly doesn’t come into play.

I suspect that not only would their legs would not only be more pleasing in colour than those of your average white, but they might also be less spindly. Unfortunately, it is my experience that to a man these gentlemen have far too much fashion and wouldn’t be seen dead in shorts. (Is that racist? I hope not. I was once accused of being racist (inevitably by a white honky) because I suggested that, on the whole, our blacks can dance better than our whites. I was only able to escape a criminal charge when I remembered and reapeatd Lenny Henry’s old joke about ecstasy: it’s a drug so strong that it make white people think they can dance.)

So there you have it, my campaign: Say No To Brits In Shorts!

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I am still puzzled by the number of viewings of my blog I am getting from the Ukraine and Turkey, and the continuing popularity of my comments about one Francois Hollande and his dick. Perhaps the mystery will one day be explained.