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The Telegraph – Cap of good hope

Flat hats are the nearest we have to national dress. They are our equivalent of the beret. Asda has now announced it is surprised to be selling three times as many in the affluent South East as in the North.

But the tweed cap has ever been a democratic, one-nation accessory, for the rich man in his deer park, the poor man in his pub.

It warms the bonces of farmers at a Welsh cattle auction as warmly as the skulls of a Purdey-carrying shooting party.

Telegraph readers do not need to be tutored in the proprieties of cap-wearing.

But the classless fashion victims who look to Mr and Mrs Guy Ritchie for dress sense too seldom know what to do with a cap, when to raise it to a woman, hardly even to doff it in church, should they by chance find themselves in one.

Seldom know what to do with a cap? Sing it, Red!

Heaven forbid that the flat hat should, like the Burberry check, be sullied as an emblem of self-styled chavdom.