Never trust a man who wears shorts outside of his holidays

THE crypto currency FTX collapsed last week, losing $32bn dollars of value overnight. Sam Bankman-Fried, the youthful founder once hailed as a crypto legend and now facing possible extradition to the US from his Bahamas base, is always seen in a pair of shorts. So are we surprised by FTX’s downfall? Not at all.

Why? It’s simple. Never trust a man who wears shorts outside of his holidays. Bad taste or ostentation is one thing but many items that men own or wear have the distinct whiff of poor judgment about them.

Take snaffle loafers. Loafers per se are fine, such as the soft blue Tod’s Rishi Sunak wore last week in Bali.

But loafers with glinting snaffles across the top of them are a clear indication of something not being quite right.

Too brash for a start. I once underwent a number of hypnotism sessions with a man wearing them, who – after I had dropped a cool £1,000 to pay for treatments with him

– concluded that I had a stubborn energy that precluded his technique from working. The loafers! I should have been warned off by those loafers.

A man whose hair is trimmed at the back to a knife edge is also suspicious, unless he’s in the military.

It’s unnecessarily precise, and the fact that he pays such attention to his own appearance will, more than likely, indicate a narcissistic self-obsession.

And could we please take a moment to consider pinkie rings?

They are surely a classic bounder indicator, even if you are an old Etonian. Perhaps particularly if you are an old Etonian. It’s not only in matters of style where cad warnings can be detected. A man who produces two phones is waving a red flag. It might be necessary for him to own more than one phone but it’s never necessary to lay out two on the table. That is simply grandstanding.

Oh, and who could ever trust a

man who fusses about what brand of mineral water he must drink?

A sign, if ever there was one, that they won’t ever be able to concentrate on what is really important. It’s like a man who has an opinion on linen thread counts.

Any man who puts his foot down on the accelerator of a hugely expensive sports car when driving in town can never be trustworthy.

And although they might appear to be caring for the planet, I also have grave suspicions about any man driving a whacking great Tesla.

The list is long and somewhat subjective, and I’m sure you will have other suggestions or disagree with mine. But, trust me on those shorts. They never ever come good.