As you may or may not have heard, Tory MP and married father-of-five Brooks Newmark is in trouble for texting an explicit picture of himself to someone who was not his wife.

What really bit B-New in the back benches, though, was the fact this someone was also not the attractive twentysomething Tory PR woman called Sophie Wittams whom he thought he was texting. In fact Sophie Wittams wasn't a woman at all, "she" was a middle-aged male journalist who had set up a Twitter account adorned with a picture of a pretty 22-year-old Swedish model. This model, also not called Sophie Wittams and also not married to Brooks Newmark, is now furious, which is understandable.

While it's not the greatest political scandal of our age - everyone knows that was the rigging of the independence referendum by Donald Trump and the Jedburgh branch of the Royal British Legion - there's been a bit of blether about it.

But a very important fact seems to have been overlooked here. Yes, we can sneer at a man who thinks his majority so big it merits a selfie. Yes, we can tut-tut at him for sending that picture to a young woman, even if she doesn't actually exist. But what's really shocking is not the bit of Brooks Newmark which was on display in that ill-judged smartphone image, but the garment covering the bits of him which were not. You see the Honourable Member for Braintree was wearing a pair of paisley pyjamas at the time. As mad old Kurtz says at the end of Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness: The horror! The horror!

Reaching for my much-loved copy of Hardy Amies' ABC Of Men's Fashion, I find the great man waxing lyrical about the pleasures of a clean pair of jim-jams. Fair enough. He leans towards cotton poplin. But, he adds: "As regards the pattern and colour of the cloth, great liberty of choice is allowed and too often taken." I can't be sure, but I think he means paisley is a no-no.

It certainly is in my king-size four-poster waterbed. For me, paisley-patterned pyjamas recall childhood and not being allowed to stay up for Charlie's Angels. Irrational maybe, but it still hurts. I also recall a particularly nasty pair in purple flannel that I wore when I had chickenpox. These days I'm a dad in plaid - or Rupert Bear in an old Guns n' Roses T-shirt, if you prefer.

But not everyone thinks the way I do, apparently. Marks & Spencer claimed last week that it has sold out of paisley-patterned jim-jams since the Newmark story broke. Mind you, if you believe that you probably do think Donald Trump rigged the indyref.

Talking of which, David Cameron revealed last week that his son Elwen donned a pair of tartan pyjamas on the night of the vote and then watched the results come through with his dad at 4am. Not as interesting a watch as Charlie's Angels, perhaps, but better than nothing - and proof of an old journalistic saying: you wait ages for one politically-themed pyjama story to come along then two arrive at once. Sweet dreams, everyone.