Boxer shorts

Chaps, be honest. Have you achieved nether-region nirvana? Twenty years ago I had reached the summit of underwear style and comfort but was haunted by the fear that one day I would come crashing down from these Elysian heights. My brand would go out of business and I would be confronting knicker nemesis. And sure enough, a while ago my fashionista friend Kitty Go duly reported that Regatta of Manila, purveyor of the world’s most fabulous baggy boxers in the jauntiest fabrics, was no more. The crisis had struck.

Let’s waste no time on jockeys, Y-fronts, briefs or those execrable jersey cotton hybrids or clingy lycra atrocities beloved by the clueless young. No, when a man is north of 40, he needs the tried and tested boxer short, named (so Shaun Cole’s The Story of Men’s Underwear tells me) after the heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey, who won the 1919 world title in a pair of long loose shorts.