My boss just walked over to ask for something. Before she could, though, she spied the semi-naked pictures of Mick Hucknall, Nigel Havers and David Beckham on my computer screen. I explained that I was writing my column, but it was too late: she’d seen the shot of David Walliams, smeared with grease, emerging from his cross-Channel swim. Transfixed yet repelled, she backed away.

Contemporary man is increasingly subjected to the same beauty-myth bilge that has made so many women so unhappy for so long. Male body-image insecurity is used to market stuff, from calf implants to manscara, that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago.

Thankfully, I have yet to read a “Get your body ready for the beach” guide aimed at men, despite the fact that we are now falling victim to the same kind of scrutiny to which we have long subjected women. The slob’s techniques for getting a sofa-sculpted torso presentable for poolside scrutiny are to a) suck in your gut or b) wear very loud board shorts. Yet a stomach can only be held in for so long and, as Tony Blair can attest, however eye-catching the Vilebrequins, they are not enough to fend off man-boob gibes.

So I’m going to follow the example of Hucknall et al and wear a pair of budgie-smugglers – as Australians call Speedos – on the beach this summer. Sometimes attack is the best form of defence, and my boss’s reaction proves that the sight of a man in a lollybag – as Australians less often call Speedos – is enough to render even the most quick-witted speechless.

tokenmale@thetimes.co.uk