Some people dream of making a difference, some dream of foreign lands, some dream of a life less lived. If you’re a metrosexual failed professional footballer from the home counties you dream of getting on that tube one day at Gants Hill and heading to the bright lights of London to work in a department store so you can get a 30% staff discount on your Versace Y-fronts. Dreams, however, rarely come true so many never make it beyond their local Burton. But the intelligent ones (those with three or more GCSEs) end up in the big city working in the men’s fashion department at Selfridges or Liberty.

These lucky lads like to show the locals in their town that they are a successful cosmopolitan Londoner by dressing a certain way, taking style tips from their idols David Beckham and JLS. I call it “the look that seasons can’t define” – they wear flip-flops in winter and have a scarf wrapped round their neck in summer. They’re also constantly in imposing sunglasses – probably even when they are having sex.

If you ever have the misfortune of speaking to one of these highstreet heartthrobs you’ll soon find them trying to regale you with a threesome story (they all have one). Worse still is when they start telling you how much they “love music” while recommending you go and buy the latest album by their new favourite band The Script, who they discovered when they won some free tickets for V Festival. Read below for a breakdown of this popular look.

Hair: A £50 Toni & Guy number one all over, done with a pair of scissors.
Hat: A baggy woolly hat which resembles a baby’s nappy that is sagging with steaming shit, hence my preferred name for it: the “poo hat”.
Tattoos: Non-specifically spiritual, meaningless phrases such as “Living my destiny” in Shakespearean black script on the forearm or chest.
Jacket: Like 14-year-old girls on a night out in Newcastle, they rarely wear jackets because they think it “messes up their look”. They usually compromise with a thick-knit cardigan with pointlessly MASSIVE buttons.
Top: A low-cut V-neck T-shirt to show off their freshly waxed chest, which pokes out like an erect penis. The chest is usually covered in zits and little white mounds of puss formed around ingrown hairs.
Trousers: Baggy distressed designer jeans that they picked up in the fake vintage section in Diesel, held up by a studded belt with a “cool, edgy” phrase such as “PUNK ROCK” on the buckle.
Favourite phrases: “Receipt in the bag?”
Footwear: Flip-flops, plimsolls or – if they are particularly daring/have ambitions of appearing on The X Factor – stupid designer re-imagining of army boots from the 1940s which are left gaping at the top to accommodate a hefty wad of denim.
Accessories: An iPhone (which they don’t use because they can’t find the keypad) and a peroxide-blonde girlfriend who is moody as fuck, with a constant scowl on her face – the living embodiment of the phrase “Who put sand up your vagina?”
Girlfriend: See above.
Plaid shirt? Yes, until Nuts says they are uncool.
Fixed-gear bike? No way. They use their mum’s Peugeot 206.

Illustration by Daniel David Freeman