I was reading about a chap who almost went bankrupt because of his knicker fetish.

Not the ones you might obtain surreptitiously from washing lines, but the ones he bought in such vast quantities that their cost threatened his fiscal future.

Curt Almond of Bristol is 26 and became obsessed with changing his pants every day.

Not so strange, you might think. Most people change their underpants every day.

But Curt decided he had to slip on a new pair of Calvin Kleins every day and throw the old ones out.

His hygiene fetish started after a friend confessed he wore the same ones three days in a row.

Reeling with shock and horror, he began spending £40 a week on Calvin Kleins which he wore once and then discarded.

“I loved it,” he said. “It always felt great to slip into a crisp pair.

“I didn’t feel comfortable unless I was wearing a new pair.”

He broke the habit when his mum put up his rent and he got a bill he couldn’t pay. Now he washes them like everyone else.

How times have changed. I have seen underpants come and go in all varieties of design, material and style. The worst were probably the bikini brief skimpies that blokes wore in the 1970s. By heck, but they could make your eyes water.

Years ago, Y-fronts were washed so often that even the elastic waistbands went baggy. In the 1960s Americans wore paper underpants but they got a bad Press – a cowboy who wore them was convicted of rustling.

Mothers used to remind sons to change their underpants in case they got run over by a bus. If that happened, I would have thought underpants would have been the least of their worries.

But this seems to suggest part of the problem may lay with blokes being too lazy to put on clean ones. And they still seem to be lackadaisical when it comes to personal hygiene.

A 2013 Marks and Spencer poll found that almost a third of chaps only changed their underwear every two or three days.

An Australian study found 32% of men will wear underwear at least two days in a row and Mintel market research in 2012 said 22% don’t change daily.

They blamed “a distinct whiff of laziness among men.” Plus a possible whiff of something else.

These days, celebrity models like David Beckham promote underwear as being sexy.

Boxer shorts come with a touch of lycra for a snug, comfortable fit and a feeling of security. They are reasonably priced and everyone has use of a washing machine.

We can’t all look like Beckham but surely it’s time every bloke changed his underpants every day.