I have bought 14 pairs of underpants in the past year, from Gap, M&S and – let me just check the ones I'm wearing – John Lewis. They're all comfortable boxers in sensible stripes and dark shades. There's not a posing pouch, high-cut brief or elephant-mask willy warmer among them.
Until yesterday, I would have thought this made me one of the world's most boring shoppers. But now I know better. I'm clearly a pantsaholic.
At least, that's the only sense I can make of a new survey from Debenhams, which claims (though not always convincingly) to shed some light on men's underwear-buying habits. While the average 23-year-old allegedly buys up to 31 pairs a year "of all styles, tightness and colours", and even 40-year-olds manage a dozen pairs in as many months, once you reach 44 (I'm 46) Debenhams reckons you give up the habit for life. Not because by then you have bought 284 pairs (based on the survey's figures) and never need to fork out for Y-fronts or tangas ever again, but because a woman is doing it for you. "Even the most macho men delegate the duty of buying underpants to women as soon as they can," claims Rob Faucherand, the store's head of men's accessories buying.
There's obviously some truth in this: a married friend the same age as me admitted that he couldn't remember the last time he bought his own pants. But the survey leaves some questions unanswered. Firstly, what about men who love men? Who buys their smalls? Just as importantly, what about all the single straight blokes out there? Am I the only one who doesn't carry on wearing the same fraying bits of cotton, patching up the holes and praying for Miss Right to hurry along? What would the doctors think if you all got run over by a bus?
