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| String vest wearer Rab C Nesbitt |
It was once a symbol of unreconstructed masculinity, beloved of miners and builders and warming the out-of-shape bodies of characters such as Alf Garnett, Jim Royle and Rab C Nesbitt.
Now, however, the string vest is facing extinction, shunned by today's well-groomed, modern man.
Unlike Andy Capp, metrosexual males apparently prefer a classier looking white singlet.
Citing a lack of vested interest, the retailer Asda has decided that the market for the string alternative has unravelled to the extent that it will no longer stock them.
Even the few men who would still willingly pull on a string vest are not buying them, the chain's research suggests, as their more fashion-conscious wives and partners will not let them.
Invented in 1933 by Henrik Brun, a commandant in the Norwegian army, string vests took a scientific approach to keeping warm, by trapping insulating pockets of air close to the skin.
The garment had its heyday in the 1950s, but sales began to look a little threadbare in the 1980s.
Increasingly ragged during the 1990s, by two years ago they had disintegrated completely.
Ed Watson, a spokesman for Asda, said: "The once familiar site of a butch man with his stomach bulging in a string vest is now a thing of the past.
'Building sites will never be the same again."
Article by Gary Cleland - 7 December 2007
