I wear a red jacket for my travel series. You may recognise it. Especially if it’s yours. It could be. I have picked up a few along the way. But it is distinctive – red, in fact, and highly visible from hundreds of yards distant. “There he is!” Clever, eh? 

I stole the idea from Where’s Wally? He has a stripy outfit and looks gormless. So… yes, there is a resemblance. 

I have a brown one, too. Harry, my favourite interfering director, told me in New York that he didn’t want me to wear my usual jacket. “It’s too, er… red.”

Directors rarely recognise a thematic subtext. What is there to distinguish me from Michael Palin, Susan Calman, Miriam Margolyes and other wandering celebs who can’t get a proper acting job? I’m the one in the red jacket. But when I showed Harry the brown thing, he said: “Have you got anything else?” 

“I have this one,” I said cautiously.

“That’s perfect,” he said – and the red outerwear was back in. They are easily distracted, directors, I find.

It debuted on Mountain in 2005. That was three billion years ago. But it has done 10 other series since (I should send it to the dry cleaners). I have duplicates – ready to swap if I fall in a pond. 

This jacket is not “an anorak”. I was mortified by a review that called it that, in an outpouring of TV highlights scorn. It is, rather, an “Idea by Massimo Osti” who originally designed the garment (with its four thousand pockets in which to lose a face mask) for the Mille Miglia in 1953. It has vintage, male fashion cred among the natty football set. 

Only yesterday, I bumped into style guru James Brown. He told me, quite unbidden, that when he was editor of GQ there was chatter in the online menswear locker room about your columnist’s TV attire. He spoke quite unbidden, but I bade more.

I was the subject of a face-off. Who is the more fashionably dressed: Griff or Portillo? (No doubt, the Play-Doh-featured one with his tomato-coloured trousers, lime green sweaters and lemon jackets won.) But mine is an eye-catching, dandy option and I regularly receive enquiries. “What exactly is the funny porthole on the sleeve for?” 

“Looking at your watch in the rain.”