Stripes

"A bouncer at the Opus restaurant and nightclub has decided that stripy shirts - the enduringly inoffensive candy-coloured barcode design favoured by bankers and Sloanes - do not meet the venue's dress code.

'In my experience, people who wear stripy shirts are trouble-causers and scallies,' Opus's club manager is alleged to have said to a group of 24 aspirant entrants, one of whom had the temerity to wear a striped shirt....

But how does wearing innocent stripes allude to trouble-making? Horizontal stripes conjure up visions of Breton sailors and pie-eyed rugger buggers. And vertical stripes? Just what is going on here?

The people at Opus, acutely aware of the international incident they may have caused with what we must now call 'Stripygate', will only clarify their clobber restriction thus: 'We would state that our dress policy excludes certain branded, striped and checked shirts and tops at the discretion of door staff and management...'"

Simon Mills, In Manchester, it's three stripes and you are out, in The Guardian newspaper, 6.2.07