Readers with a memory rather better than that of a goldfish will recall that we recently unearthed the phrase "peak beard", a neat term cooked up by some Australian researchers who used it to describe the point at which something becomes so ubiquitous that it's no longer deemed attractive or different.

The Australian team applied it to facial hair so from there it wasn't long before we had talk of peak hipster (they being very attached to their beards). Since then it's been wheeled out to describe one or two other things. A friend of mine who runs an outdoor falafel stall in Edinburgh recently told me we'd apparently reached peak street food and the phrase "peak football" was used a lot in my house around the time the two-games-a-day group stages of the World Cup were ending. Not by me, obviously.

Clearly, then, there's some mileage in the peak this/peak that routine - in other words, we aren't yet at what you might call peak peak - so here are a few other things to which the phrase could (or should) be applied. Drop them into casual conversation with strangers and you're sure to impress them and draw admiring glances for your finger-on-the-pulseness.

Peak tattoo If the tipping point didn't come when 75-year-old politician-botherer David Dimbleby had a six-legged scorpion inked on his shoulder last autumn, we had certainly reached it by the time the World Cup finished. Hardly a player took to the pitch who didn't have some kind of hard-to-fathom design on his arm, though it was notable that the winner of the Golden Ball award for best player, Lionel Messi, is pretty much an ink-free zone.

Peak monocle This one was over before it began, really.

Peak moustache It goes without saying that if the beard is going the way of the Betamax, the 'tache will soon be joining it. Good riddance, I say. What that might mean, however, is that we see the return of long hair, side burns or, God forbid, dreadlocks. You have been warned.

Peak espadrille The espadrille has been a summer staple for a few years now so if the trend isn't quite at its peak, it can't be far off. We've had peak deck shoe, peak Croc and peak flip-flop, so once the current craze for espadrilles and sandals dies down the way is clear for a new form of summer footwear. Flippers, maybe? They're easier to walk in than flip-flops and you don't have to take them off in the sea.

Peak vest Sales of summer simmets are up 70 per cent at Topman, so we're approaching the top of the curve on this one too. Can't say I've noticed, but then muscle tops are about as daring as I get.

Peak loom band The craze that came from nowhere, crashed over every primary school and then wound its way round my ankles and wrists, was always going to be self-limiting - but when even the Duchess of Cambridge is photographed wearing one, you have to ask if it isn't time to withhold the pocket money and say: "Enough with weird plastic crocheted things!"