Bring back the briefcase!

The final straw was seeing Jeremy Hunt wearing one shortly before the summer recess – and not just when riding his bicycle. He was actually walking down the street with the thing strapped to his back.

Yes, of course, it is practical, but the now ubiquitous mini-backpack is so hideous that it belongs in the same category of naffness as men who wear flip-flops outside their own home or when not staying in a rented villa on the Costas.

Once the preserve of hippies in the 1960s or gap-year students in the 1980s, these far smaller versions of backpacks (or what used to be known as rucksacks) have infiltrated modern Britain with hardly a nod in direction of style or decorum.

The backpack market in Britain is now worth around £90 million, presumably as the result of an explosion in sales of what’s described variously as a ‘day bag’ or ‘office bag’.

And they have largely confined the briefcase to oblivion.