While channel-surfing, I recently caught an ancient Queen concert from way back - '86, I believe - and was shocked by what the band was wearing.

Actually, I didn't find Freddie's stripped-to-the-waist-with-white-skintight-cavalry-officer-style-trousers look such a surprise; the man had a ripped torso, and topless, sweaty rock stars have graced many a stadium (I saw Razorlight's frontman “do a Mercury” some 20 years later, which only goes to show that in rock'n'roll there are some tried and tested riffs which never go out of fashion).

No, it wasn't the muscly moustachioed one who made my jaw drop, nor his mega-permed guitar-hero sidekick, Brian May. Instead it was mild-mannered bassist John Deacon, who seemed to be wearing a pair of shorts so tiny that they made the kind of thing favoured by Seventies footballers look positively roomy by comparison.

Men's shorts, like women's hemlines, have a habit of obeying the pendulum-swing principle of fashion. Take the aforementioned arena of football, for example: time was when every budding Stanley Matthews would run about in ungainly knee-length numbers which looked designed to do anything but speed progress down the wing. Then gradually the shirts got tighter, and with them the shorts too, until the Seventies, when the gods of the six-yard box were wearing little more than a nylon hanky.

But if you've been watching Euro 2008, you'll have noticed that Ronaldo and co are currently sporting something approximating a mid-length skirt with legs. We're back to Sir Stanley - and although new lightweight fabrics make these shorts much more ergonomic, as far as the length goes, the pendulum has swung full circle. Or something like that.

It's an interesting one, this, because few items of men's attire show this kind of variation. Unlike those of our fair sisters, most of our wardrobe is governed by strict rules which allow for minute variations in style from season to season: a centimetre off a lapel width here, an addition of a trouser pleat there. But with shorts you have a choice: do you go for the Borg/McEnroe thigh-skim, or the surfer/skater dude almost-ankle-scrape?

Well, some designer collections such as Bottega Veneta and Calvin Klein are reviving the short shorts look. And while there is a certain charm to these smart, chic styles, if you're over voting age, I'd be wary. There's a whiff of the schoolboy about them, which you can get away with if you are a, er, schoolboy, but if like me you have kids who are schoolboys, it might be better to steer clear.

The safer bet for grown-ups is to go for longer styles, on the basis that making the transition from short to long trousers was once a rite of passage, so the longer your shorts, the more they demonstrate taste and experience.

The modern classic is the cargo style, all big pockets and jungle-meets-safari colour palette. These work equally well at a weekend barbecue or a trip into town to an art gallery, and have the added advantage of giving you somewhere to store your car keys and phone. Check out Banana Republic's relaxed cargo shorts as a good example.

Then you can go smarter with a more plain style (Banana Republic's relaxed solid chino shorts), or if it's a preppy feel you want, buy plaids - Gap does some checked patterns that work well with deck shoes and flip-flops and will make you look as if you've just been teleported from a beach party in the Hamptons.

If that's all a bit clean-cut for you, try out the surfing/backpacking alternative from firms such as Fat Face (Surin Ripstop Short), or Quiksilver (Rex Nexus Print Walkshort). My favourite, however, is a pink vintage checked style from Paul Smith Jeans that is different enough to be interesting, but not too grungy.

All these models are long enough for those of us sufficiently long in the tooth to know that showing too much flesh at our age is neither big nor clever.

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