When package holidays began, all of a sudden we could experience life at close quarters with people from other nations. We thought the Germans were the most ridiculous people on the beach.

As Monty Python pointed out years ago, they pinched the sun beds and barged into the queues and frightened the children. And if you weren’t at the buffet spot on seven, Fritz had wolfed all the sausages.

But with the advent of the Boeing 747 came the long-haul holiday and we realised that the Germans were country mice compared with the Americans. No shorts were too large, no thong was too small.

What’s more, Hank does not like to sit on the beach and read a book. He likes to shout and play volleyball. When the Yanks are around, it’s like being on holiday in a primary school playground.

For years the Americans were in a class of their own, but then the Berlin Wall fell down and, as a result, from the Indian Ocean through the Middle East and the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, Boris and Katya were making all the running.

In many ways the Russians are like the Americans. They’re either far too fat or far too beautiful. There’s no middle ground. And again, like Uncle Sam, no part of the body is immune from man-made enhancement. The Americans go for surf-white teeth; the Russians for alarming special forces tattoos. And neither seems to see anything wrong with breast enlargement. I saw one Russian woman on the beach in Barbados the other day who had the body of a walnut and a chest that put Antigua in the shade.

However, where the Russians move into an easy lead is beach attire. For the men it’s the traditional Speedo, while the women seem to get their fashion pointers from internet porn sites. I haven’t yet seen anyone strutting down the beach in stockings and suspenders but it’s only a matter of time.

Today, though, a new contender has come along and blown the old favourites into the seaweed. The title of Most Stupid People on the Beach has gone in 2004 . . . to Britain.

We were designed to make Spitfires and Beagles. We’re supposed to be in a shed, in gloves, inventing stuff. We therefore do not look good on a beach. We’re piggy white and if you expose us to the sun, we turn into Battenburg cake.

We’re designed for bracing walks along the front in Scarborough and wet camping holidays in Scotland. But our newly discovered wealth means we can now go to the tropics. Because it’s new money we really have no idea what to do with it.

Women are the worst offenders. On the beach they have a swimsuit, a watch and a pair of sunglasses. Not much, in other words, to show other holidaymakers that they are “considerably richer than yow”.

It doesn’t stop them trying. Obviously they don’t go for the American thong or the Russian nipple tassels, but bikinis are held together with ludicrous gold clasps, sunglasses have absurd hinges which look as if they’ve come from a maharajah’s front door and as for the watches, they’re more like carriage clocks with straps.

At lunchtime things get worse because now there’s an excuse to cover up. So out comes the T-shirt telling everyone that you’ve been somewhere else and the bejewelled sarong.

I had to ask my wife where on earth these women buy their clothes, and she knew straight away. Dress shops. Specifically dress shops in provincial towns that have been bought by husbands to stop their wives sleeping with the binmen.

So where do the dress shops get their stock from? She was stumped. Not Armani, that’s for sure, or any designer anyone outside Leicester has ever heard of.

You’ve never seen chintz like it. And whatever happened to the simple flip-flop? Now it cannot be considered footwear unless it has a flower on it and some high heels.

Then we get to the question of these women’s teenage daughters who strut around with the word “Sex” on their bikini bottoms. Or “Peachy”. This is unnerving. Try to read a book about steamships of the 19th century when you’ve got a 15- year-old advertising her backside nine inches from your face. It’s especially unnerving for the Russians in their tight, revealing Speedos.

Something must be done, so I’ve come up with a plan. When you’re in a shop buying an outfit for your holiday, apply this simple test: have you ever seen Victoria Beckham in anything remotely similar? If the answer is yes, put it back on the peg.

If this doesn’t work, the government must step in. Again, I have an idea. Airports already have the technology to screen luggage for nail scissors and tweezers, so surely it can’t be that hard to look for, and then confiscate, gold slingback shoes, overly complicated sunglasses and any swimsuit with adornments.

I don’t mind what provincial British women wear in their own homes. But abroad they’re not just letting themselves and their families down — they’re letting the country down, too, and that has to stop.

And men: the Burberry baseball cap. No. All right? Just no.