There comes a point in a man’s life when he is no longer able to wear a T-shirt. You have only to see an overweight American tourist wobbling around looking like Winnie-the-Pooh to know that I’m right; to know that T-shirts are fine for schoolboys on sports day. But not fine thereafter.

As soon as the merest hint of a belly begins to emerge, nothing looks quite so idiotic as a T-shirt. And if, like me, you have what amounts to an overinflated space hopper down there, you know that in a T-shirt, you couldn’t look more ridiculous even if you were going around in a scuba suit.

The only thing in the world worse than a middle-aged man in a T-shirt is a middle-aged man whose T-shirt is tucked into his trousers. And the only thing in the world worse than a middle-aged man whose T-shirt is tucked into his trousers is a middle-aged man whose T-shirt is black and tucked into his trousers.

Black T-shirts are worn by roadies so that they cannot be seen as they move about the stage, at concerts, preparing the next guitar and sorting out the drummer who’s taken so much cocaine he’s fallen off his seat.

This is fine. But there is another group of people who wear black T-shirts. They are known as “German paedophiles”, and that’s not fine at all. Oh, and Simon Cowell, come to think of it.

Then you have the pink T-shirt, worn predominantly to say you are so confident about your sexuality that you can get away with anything. Unfortunately, the problem with wearing a pink T-shirt is that I’m afraid you don’t look confident at all. You look like a cruising homosexual. Which is fine if you are. But annoying if you are just shopping.

I should also point out that T-shirts really, really don’t work if they didn’t cost very much money. Because after one wash they’ll look like a council-house nightie. And they don’t work on a biblical level if you walk around with a CND slogan on the front. Especially if your dad is president of the United States of America.

The worst thing you can have on your T-shirt, however, is a place name, particularly if it’s the exotic-sounding place name of somewhere far, far away from where you are at the time. You must have noticed this. If you are in Barbados, you will note that absolutely nobody wears Barbados slogans on their chest. It’s always somewhere else. Which is why, when I’m on holiday, I’m often to be found lying on the beach in a T-shirt bearing the legend “Wakefield”.

And that brings me to a new development in the world of the T-shirt. The humorous slogan. I saw a big chap wobbling towards me in the street only last week. He was wearing a brown T-shirt, which, as we know, is usually reserved for fans of Formula One. If you know what I mean. So, naturally, I was tutting away, until I saw what the writing on it said:

“Fat men are harder to kidnap”. That made me laugh. And that made him smile, and for a moment the world was a lovelier place.

I mentioned this to my family and now they buy me lots of “funny” T-shirts. I have one that blends the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen single cover with the Jilted John classic. So it says, “Gordon is a moron”. And I have another that says, “I love animals. They’re delicious”.

Though I have to be careful about that one because often it doesn’t make the world a lovelier place. It makes thin-lipped women launch into a tirade about meat and animals, and after a while, inevitably, why the penis is fundamentally evil.

However, both of these pale into insignificance alongside the T-shirt my wife brought back as a present from her three-day and three-night lost weekend at Glastonbury. It’s grey, which is an acceptable colour, and it says, in huge letters, “****”.

Actually, it doesn’t say that at all. But I can’t say here what it does say because what it says is the worst word in the world.

I liked my new T-shirt very much. I liked it so much that last week I wore it to the rehearsals of a Top Gear show, where everyone else liked it very much as well.

But after a while, as is the way with these things, everyone had seen it, everyone had had their giggle and everyone had asked where they might get one. So, soon, the joke has been lost in a desert of familiarity. And that’s why, later in the day, when I was approached by a group of Japanese people, I never gave my slogan a second thought.

It turned out they were there from the company that makes the incredible Gran Turismo computer racing game, and they were in England to map out and chart the Top Gear test track for inclusion in the next, even more realistic version. Of course, it was very important that I met the boss.

Naturally, there was much bowing, and a lot of accepting and presenting business cards with two hands. Obviously, I didn’t give him my business card because I don’t actually have a business. Or a card. But I found one in my pocket — from David Linley, the furniture maker, strangely — and gave him that. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t speak English. None of them could. Which is why they weren’t offended by my shirt.

But then, equally inevitably, out came the cameras. Many hand signals suggested they wanted me to pose with their head honcho and, of course, I obliged. It would have been rude to say no. But not, as it turns out, half as rude as appearing in the firm’s promotional material in a T-shirt bearing the worst word in the world. Which is what’s happened.

I would like, therefore, to take this opportunity to apologise to the man, the company he runs, all of the children in the world who've been offended and the people of Japan. I am so very, very solly.

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