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One of the best-known beach inspectors was Aubrey Laidlaw, who had already laid down the law when the first bikini debuted on the beach in 1946. By the turn of the 1960s, the “Bikini Wars” were in full swing. Laidlaw and his inspectorate patrolled the beach with tape measures, methodically escorting scantily clad women away. But one morning in 1961, he saw something that astonished even him – men in Speedo trunks. He called the police and had them arrested for indecent exposure.

The American swimmer Mark Spitz won seven golds in his Speedo trunks at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Until swimsuits became hi-tech in the 1990s, the swim brief was the choice of swimmers, divers and water polo players. And by the 1980s, the basic British man wore them, too.

Nonetheless, the swimming brief has always had its strongholds – in Australia, as well as in Italy, Greece and France, where many an English teenager has been dismayed to discover that tight swimming trunks are compulsory in public swimming pools. The logic is that it is unhygienic to swim in shorts that may have been used to play football in, sit on the grass in, barbecue in, and so on. I’d guess that a handful of Brexit votes were swung by this rule alone. Barker now wears them on holiday in Europe, but never in Los Angeles, where he resides. The surf culture plus that peculiarly adolescent strain of American puritanism dictates that men wear shorts.

The exalted status of the swim brief in gay iconography goes some way to explaining why it is viewed with such fear and loathing elsewhere. In 2018, a man named Chris Donohoe complained that he was the victim of homophobia after being thrown out of a pool party at a hotel in Las Vegas for flouting the “no Speedo” rule. “It so obviously targets LGBTQ+ and non-gender-conforming people,” he argued. “They need to stop policing people based on their gender identity and sexuality.” But he holds some hope that the skimpy brief is becoming more acceptable, especially given the attention that even young British men give to honing their bodies. “That iconic Daniel Craig coming out of the water moment wasn’t quite a Speedo but it was a tight number. I think that helped change things.” And perhaps we should stop being so judgmental. Peter Travis – who went on to design the interior of the Australian parliament building – expressed regret that his creation should have become a source of ridicule. “I’ve heard people saying things like, ‘Oh that fat old man looks terrible in Speedos,’ and I don’t like that,” he once told an Australian paper. “The point is, he looks just as bad in anything, but he shouldn’t be criticised because he wants to wear something to swim in. He’s not there for people to look at. Why shouldn’t a person who wants to swim wear that and not be criticised?” Whatever your instinctive feelings towards the Speedo swimming brief, you can tell that it is a design classic because the brand has become synonymous with the product – like “hoover” for vacuum cleaner. Other brands are, of course, available – and Speedo the company sells the full range of aquatic attire – but when someone says “Speedo” what comes to mind is, well, budgie smugglers. Tom Daley, incidentally, now wears Adidas trunks.

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As Daley himself once explained to Graham Norton, who wondered why his trunks had to be quite so tight: “If you’re spinning around the last thing you want is to have something come out of place! And when you hit the water you don’t want things flapping about, because it would hurt.” However, if you Google “Tom Daley” and “Speedo”, once you have finished marvelling at his inguinal creases, you’ll appreciate why Out magazine once described this piece of clothing as “the single most perfect and pithy item of clothing ever designed for the male body”. The editor of GQ Style has 51 pairs, including a denim and a knitted pair The first Speedo brief came in 17.5cm, 12.5cm and 7.5cm widths. “It was designed quite practically, not with fashion in mind,” he later recalled. “I realised you shouldn’t have anything around your waist that would twist when you swim. The only way you could stop that would be to end the cut on your hips. It’s designed as a purely functional object.”