BRIEFLY SPEAKING

I had a curious conversation with my wife recently during which she informed me that in her opinion there was no greater turn-off than seeing a man 'adjust' himself. She added that she was very glad that this particular behaviour was not included among my long list of bad habits. She then thought for a moment and asked "Why do so many men do that?"

Well it's an easy question to answer. The reason is that they are wearing the wrong underwear. In the good/bad (delete as appropriate) old days, British gentlemen had little choice. We wore 'Y-fronts' which we had bought from Marks & Spencer. These were available in a choice of colours - namely white - and after a few washes they turned uniformly grey.

At some stage, the fashion of wearing 'boxers' came in. These were named after the style of shorts worn by ring fighters which were designed to allow freedom of leg movement. They seemed to prove popular with our lady friends and gradually, Y-fronts lost popularity.

Now boxer shorts have an obvious disadvantage. Anything which dangles has to choose to fall to the left or the right, there is no centre ground. Having made that decision, the dingle-dangles are periodically squashed between the underwear and your thigh and need to be rescued - hence the 'adjustment' which my wife finds so distasteful.

My own solution to the problem is to wear the type of briefs which have a pouch at the front in which to keep your crown jewels both safe and supported. When playing sport, I wear the 'hipster' style which is a little more close fitting and in bed I wear boxers because they allow air circulation and the dangle issue doesn't occur when lying prone in bed.

So there we have it gentlemen. If you wear the right underwear there will be no need to adjust yourself and your fingers will therefore be free to pick your nose with.