CONFESSION time; and I hope you’ve had breakfast because this one involves underwear. We’re not quite in J. Edgar Hoover territory here but I’m coming out of the cultural closet. I’m wearing long johns.

I know. The mere thought is putting you off your goji-berry-sprinkled muesli but this has to be aired and shared because the decision to wear such inner-garment has thrown the brain into bagatelle mode, leaving me almost as confused as Labour’s Brexit position.

The long johns are being worn in answer to the cold of course, but the fear is wearing them could cause psychological damage. Why? These extra-long underpants signal social deprivation. The mere thought of pulling on a pair causes flashbacks of Fifties kitchen sink dramas, a period of rickets and peeling wallpaper.

Long Johns are the Paw Broon, the Albert Steptoe, of men’s underwear. Their socio-economic relationship is such that to wear them suggests I’m travelling backwards, to a pre-history before central heating and double glazing, when all we had to warm us was salty porridge and Torchy The Battery Boy.

To wear them also suggests uncool-ness. In the movies, long johns were never worn by Steve McQueen or Sean Connery (post-Bond). They were worn by toothless gold prospectors in The Treasure of Sierra Madre or klutzy creatures played by Jack Lemmon. To borrow a modern idiom, they’re pants.

There was a time however, research suggests, when long johns were once associated with testosterone, made and marketed by John Smedley of Matlock and named after John Sullivan (not the Only Fools and Horses writer), the late 19th century boxer who fought in them. To be fair, Sullivan looked the macho business. Yet when Scots such as Benny Lynch pulled them on the notion of coolness came away at the stitching.

Just as JFK killed off hats in the Sixties, Steptoe and co killed off the full-length underpant. And this lack of sexiness associated with the long john is crucial when considering the confused mind.

To wear a pair, it seems, is to embark upon immediate self-emasculation. Thanks to the flat-front design, the wearer is rendered gender neutral like an Action Man toy. (A colleague suggests they are little more than tights for boys.) And if you meet a prospective partner and they discover you to be wearing longues jambes (as the French describe them) the chances of congress coming about are as likely as a Kez and Richard mistletoe kissing.

You may argue of course a possible sexual partner can’t see through trousers. But transparency appears in another form; the face of a man with a secret. Demeanour will always be the LJ-wearer’s downfall.

Now, there is the argument the long john wearer has the ultimate choice in whether to pull on a pair in the morning. But do we? Really? Perhaps the ongoing debate about men’s role in society, the extreme feminist’s demand for a reduction of testosterone given recent abuse claims, has resulted in a culture of blame acceptance; perhaps this psychological seepage results in the wearing of the long john being in itself an apology; by removing the sense of manliness you are at one with the MeToo sentiment.

You may consider this postulation a little spurious, but that would be to deny the theory that clothes condition the mind. But think about it; when is the last time you ever saw a man in flip flops start a fight? Wear flip flops and you start to read Deepak Chopra and think about holidaying in Phuket. Wear long johns and you’ll think about Ovaltine and the MacMillan government.

Yet, the confused mind also hears the screaming voice of the confirmed LJ wearer; “What about Ewan McGregor in Young Adam? Or Richard Madden in Lady Chatterley’s Lover? These guys looked hot. And not just because the long johns were keeping them warm.” And indeed, some will recall David Beckham once flirting with the marketing of the long pants, and Asda, during a cold snap, once selling LJs like hot cakes.

It’s a point. Perhaps long johns aren’t a symbol of urban squalor, of freezing shipyards or train maintenance workers at four in the morning? And it’s true the aristocracy also wore long johns, as evidenced in every novel written by EM Forster. (But this too was a world of austerity, of those confined to live in homes way past the height of decency that were impossible to heat.)

However, the rung-out mind insists long johns are simply wrong, the clothing of comedy, whether featured in a Brian Rix farce or on the frame of Rising Damp’s chaotic and deluded Rigsby.

Will this change? T-shirts were simply an undergarment before Marlon Brando in Streetcar and suddenly the vest became cool. Perhaps if David Gandy were to model a pair of long johns they’d be reinvented as say Manpants? Oh, I’d love that more than drug dealers love Bitcoin. Then those of us who can’t stand the cold would no longer be seen as an Albert Steptoe of the underpants world.