A Facebook friend posted a message that made me smile.
He said: “You should not be allowed to wear a band T-shirt unless you have at least three albums by them.”
Take heed people who have never even heard a Ramones track.
I have long held a similar view about T-shirts, sweat-shirts and sports shirts.
The only two music shirts I have sported have featured John Lennon and the logo of the Rolling Stones because I was, am and always will be an unmitigated fan of both.
Following the same argument, I am bemused when I see folk wearing T-shirts with exotic scenes and names extolling the attractions of Tijuana, San Jose, California, New York City and all points west.
The trouble is retailers often provide no other choice. I spent an hour going through the racks of a town centre store and found not one shirt emblazoned with Slawit, Brighouse or Denby Dale.
We live in God’s Own County, for goodness sake, but there wasn’t even a shirt with Yorkshire on it so we could proclaim our pride, rather than an image of some bloke holding a surf board in Hawaii?
When did anyone last surf down Huddersfield Narrow Canal? And I guarantee that if you ask the next chap you see wearing such a shirt, the closest he has been to Hawaii will have been watching re-runs of Magnum on TV.
Sports shirts are worse with Englishmen wearing the badges and colours of other nations.
Football is not the old time localised sport it once was when supporters who set off to Leeds Road early on match day might find themselves sitting next to the Town number nine on the bus also on his way to the game.
Television puts every team in the Premiership in the nation’s front rooms every week which is why Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United and City have fans the length and breadth of the country and around the world.
If you haven’t been to at least three games you shouldn’t be allowed to be a City fan.
The only team shirt I have ever worn is that of United because I grew up near the ground and was a Stretford-ender in my youth.
If anything, England’s national sporting shirts are the biggest disappointment.
At least our soccer team’s only indication of sponsorship is a discrete Nike logo, but rugby union shirts have a large O2 like a target on their front and our cricketers tell the world they shop at Waitrose.
England shirts should be unadorned by any slogan. Can national pride be bought so cheaply?
(By the way, I also qualify to wear a Ramones T-shirt).
