I used to watch a lot of cartoons when I was younger. He-Man (the original, not the terrible New Adventures of…), Thundercats, Transformers – you name it, I watched it.

One of my particular favourites was Inspector Gadget, a dipstick of a detective in the Clouseau mould who somehow defeated his enemy Dr. Claw each week through a combination of help from his dog Brain, his niece Penny, and his tech-crammed hat. I was fascinated by the go-go gadget hands/’copter/’brella/binoculars that sprang from his fedora.

But over the years, as I came to terms with the fact that Inspector Gadget was a fictional character and therefore the intricacies of storing all those devices in a modestly sized hat were beyond modern technology, I gradually came to the conclusion that I hate hats.

I’m not entirely sure where this came from, but there are clues to be found in my formative years. There’s an old photo of my dad laughing like a drain as he pulled a woolly hat over my two-year-old face. At junior school I was forced to wear a ‘Just William’ cap as part of my uniform, which I probably should’ve reported. There was also an experiment with a tweed flat cap that was ill advised for a nine-year-old. And then there was the incident with hair bleaching and a bright orange trucker cap that I’d rather not be reminded of.

And so a lifetime of hat hatred commenced; my suspicion deepened further when I decided to cultivate a particularly fluid head of hair – the hat being the natural enemy of the quiff. But leaving aside my particular horror shows, I genuinely don’t get hats in general, particularly on men. I cannot think of anyone who actually looks good wearing one. Literally no one.

I also cannot fathom any outfit, bar perhaps the stretchy trousers and hi-vis jacket of the cyclist and balaclavas of the Arctic explorer (i.e. for performance purposes), that requires the presence of something on the head. Moreover, any outfit that is improved by a hat.