At this time of year, like many of you, I start scoping out the shorts landscape. What’s out there? What’s going on? What are this year’s options in a truncated trouser? How can a man who finds no dignity in the wearing of shorts, expose his nether limbs without wanting to curl up and pray for a flash flood? What can you do when you’re under the kind of duress only a 29C heatwave and a girl who insists on a, “day down the park” can provide?

The challenge is real. Because the fundamental problem with the shorts landscape is that they’re too slim. All of them. All shorts.

I’m not, by any interpretation of the phrase, a fat man. Doubtless I would benefit from a couple of weeks off the cheeseburgers and a reintroduction to Mr Treadmill. But then who wouldn’t. The point is, I’m not obese. But that in itself is no reason to wear the kind of dinky and slender shorts I see other guys wearing. Principally there are two types. The first sits just above the knee and absolutely hugs the thigh. For all intents and purposes they look like a pair of skinny chinos that have been lopped and hemmed. If menswear is a broad church, then these belong in the Book of Revelation. Comical in their ugliness, they are, I can only assume, to be found amongst the rest of the discounted grot over at ASOS.

The second type are short-shorts – tight on the cheeks, with legs cut high, to within a whisper of your toilet part. Every year, around this time, The Guardian’s style pages proclaim the short-short to be “back!” This occurs, like clockwork, precisely 24 hours after the short-shorts’ yearly appearance on the Prada catwalk. Does no one else notice this nonsense? The truth is that this style has been making clots of men since Daniel Craig first pulled on his Orlebar Brown’s back in 2006. Magaluf is now overflowing with thoroughly epilated northern Brits, padding about in Toms; their tiny shorts straining at the gut, seemingly held in place only by a little thumb of fabric clasped in their ring-piece, like a human tea towel holder. No mate, you’re not 007, you don’t look like 007, no one thinks you’re 007 and no amount of branded shortswear is ever going to change that.

So where does that leave us? Well, these shorts from Sasquatchfabrix are pretty interesting. They’re a prestige purchase; how does $330 grab you? Still, you do get a lot of fabric for your money. Look at the size of these things. And the details: jacquard patterned fabric, drawstring waist, side pockets with zip and snap button closure, pockets round the back and a pair of pleats so sharp they’d give you a decent shave. That’s a big pair of shorts in every respect. Even with my curmudgeonly attitude to knee-length trousers, I’d wear these. They won’t make me look like James Bond. But (and I repeat for the soft-headed lager-boys at the back) no shorts ever will.