Look at those hot pants Gisele is wearing on the cover of the latest V magazine. V is America’s glossiest trend bible, and if we needed further evidence that hot pants are the height of fashion, here we have it. Of course, you might think the last time you saw something so dreadful was back in the 1980s, and the last time you saw such a cheap porn shot was behind the peanut packets in your local, but take it from V, the hot pants are Guess, the model is Gisele, the photographer is Testino and the look is super-hot.

And you know what? It is (mercifully minus the rips). This is the summer of hot pants — wherever you go, there are lithe teenagers galloping about, honeyed legs stretching out of little cropped shorts, from Bournemouth high street on a Tuesday afternoon to Mahiki at midnight. Rather like Sienna’s breasts, there are female thighs everywhere. In fact, someone’s wearing them in my office — yes, these days, shorts even make it to work.

Topshop, naturally, is full of them, mostly thanks to Kate Moss — and there’s the problem. Kate is totally identifiable with hot pants. In fact, you barely see her out without them (waistcoat, vest and scarf for shopping; gold quilted Chanel bomber for Glastonbury), and she is 34. As she told US Vogue this month: “I definitely haven’t become middle-aged. I’ve got a house and a daughter and all that, but I still like to have fun.”

Well, I’m a year older than Kate, and I’ve got a place and a kid, but can I still wear hot pants? I yanked on a pair — last sported summer of 2005 - in front of the mirror last night to check, and I’m not so sure. If we leave aside the fact that my thighs aren’t quite what they used to be, is it right for a 35-year-old working mother to sport a pair of shorts the same size as her knickers? Hot pants are about youth and fun, unbridled sexiness and flirting, that go-anywhere, do-anything lifestyle. It’s a look that says, invite me on board your private yacht and I’ll be the party. It says, check out my thighs, guess how tight I can squeeze them? It says, I’m so hot, I’ll let you see all the way to my knick-knacks.

And that’s where Kate’s magic lies. She can have the kid, the career, the house, the 34 years, but she can also pull off the shag-me-in-a-limo look. As she says, “I am still acting like a 17-year-old”, and she is (just about) getting away with it.

I took off the hot pants. I don’t feel like that any more.

And then I saw a picture of the heavily stacked, flat-stomached, gravity-defying Helen Mirren wearing a red bikini at the age of 62. Sod it, the hot pants are mine.

Shane Watson is away

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