And knickers to you too!

Just occasionally I get an absolute cracker of an old fashioned “viewer’s letter”.

This week, 82-year-old Mildred wrote to me.

She said how much she loved my colourful ties – that she had even discussed them with her late husband. She’d asked him why he would not wear one.

“Bright coloured ties go with bright coloured underpants – I wouldn’t touch them”, he’d told her.

Sadly, Mildred tells me, her hubby died before she remembered to ask him why the two go together and what the problem might be if they did.

So she wrote to me to find out if it was true. I mean what is a man to say if a sprightly 82-year-old writes so candidly?

Yesterday I wore a particularly bilious painted silk stripy job.

I checked the boxers. Bright orange stripes. Mildred’s hubby was right.

My old mother told me it didn’t matter what colour my pants were so long as they were clean – should I ever get run over. It would never do to end upon the mortuary slab with dirty underpants!

The excellent FT columnist Lucy Kellaway opined on bright ties last week. For once she was quite wrong:

“Office workers try to show difference by subverting their uniform in other ways, just as children do.

“A bright tie, red socks, a flash of crimson in the lining of a suit – all are the equivalent of the school girl who hitches up her skirt or the school boy who ties his tie so that it only descends about four inches down his shirt.

“But with an adult it’s not daring – it’s desperate.

“A man in a loud tie doesn’t say that he is creative and interesting, but that he is tiresome.”
(FT 6th December 2009)

In this regard only, Mildred must prevail over Lucy. My octogenarian letter writer was quite right, her hubby should have worn bright ties.

The entire ensemble of man – shirt, suit, tie – is pretty odd anyway.  If it has to be done, it should be done properly.

What on earth goes through a man’s mind when he ties some nondescript rag round his neck of a morning?

Heaven preserve us that he should add to it with a no longer white pair of de-elasticated old Y-fronts.