As I no longer own a fob watch, I’ve stopped buying three-piece suits. 

When I first started work in London I’d always buy a suit with a waistcoat; not for any stylish reason, but because it was colder in the ‘70s – the end of the last Ice Age. 

Occasionally they had “take your hamster to work“ day – so the extra pocket was useful – although it would get quite crowded in there if I was playing snooker.

The tiny pockets of the three-piece suit had manifold functions: hamster and chalk aside, you could hook your thumbs in and do impressions of Mussolini.  This was marginally more acceptable in the ‘70s than the ‘40s.  Although one Mike Yarwood never tried. 

You could store your train ticket in one.  These were the days when contactless meant you’d not heard from someone for a while or was a person not stored on the flip-up phone directory which sat on a table in the hall beside the phone. 

I used to have watch in my waistcoat.  It was second-hand, broken and actually a stop watch.  It was forever stuck on 3.59.  Either the owner had had some terrible accident just before four in the morning (or afternoon) as the watch had stuck at that time, or it belonged to Roger Bannister.  

He never owned a three-piece suit.  He did, however, have a three-piece suite, as he had to put his feet up a lot.