Rod Stewart is quite right about our deplorable dress sense Nobody will ever accuse Rod Stewart of being an arbiter of fashion. On the other hand, when you see the unmitigated tosh that passes for haute couture on the ramps of London, Paris or Milan, and the pretentious rubbish that's written about it, Rod's recent rant about the average man about town's deplorable dress sense had him leaning against an open door, with me at least. I have fulminated before now at the sight of men in sweatshirts and torn denim, while their womenfolk are dressed like the Pope's mother, in what MasterChef's Gregg Wallace calls "high end" dining establishments. It's inverted snobbery, of course, as is all "dressing down." Look at me! Loadsamoney, but I haven't changed, I'm no stuck-up toff! And at the BBC it has become an article of faith that no manager, or executive with an eye on bigger things, can ever be seen wearing a tie. Only a matter of time before they start wearing their shirts outside their trousers. It would seem that in Broadcasting House, the suit, tie and pocket handkerchief betray a lack of get-up-and-go, and possibly even incorrect political alignment. I blame the former director general, Mark Thompson, who not only dispensed with the suit and tie, but the razor as well. The unquenchable Rod follows in the footsteps of his fellow great Scot, Rabbie Burns, who said that the greatest gift of all was "To see ourselves as others see us." He was not talking about physical appearance, but we do tend to judge the book by the cover. Which makes it sad that most of us have no idea what we really look like. What else can explain the sights that assail the eye on the streets of our cities, particularly when the sun bursts through? Men in vests, in shorts that should have been destroyed years ago, wearing sandals with black ankle-socks; girls, their bare midriffs bulging over too-short shorts. Yet all of these folk have a mirror, which they undoubtedly consulted before strutting their stuff before the rest of us. What can they have seen? Not what the rest of us can see, or surely they would never have left home. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" asked the Wicked Stepmother, and she always got the answer she was looking for. Her mirror was a downright liar, just like yours, and mine. Anorexics see only that they're too fat, the obese cannot see that they are bursting out all over. Our reflection in the mirror tells us what we want to see. Courage! Face the world, secure in the knowledge that everyone else, like yourself, thinks they're better looking than they really are. Except, you know the truth and they do not.