I SHALL sound like a terrible snob, but it is an itch I simply have to scratch – an irritation which won’t heal unless I air it in this diary.

On my break to the sun-dappled bays in Turkey, Harrington could not help but cringe at the number of Dads who spent their entire holidays wearing replica football shirts.

Every time I popped out for an afternoon baklava and an apple sour or two, there would be the same bloke plodding along by the waterside each day, but wearing a different Liverpool top as he did: the home kit, the away kit, the third kit.

He cannot have been younger than 50, and yet he was not the only fellow with such a ridiculous suitcase of clothes.

There was a Manchester United supporter in the town who wore nothing but kits.

The poor soul looked like he was doing an impersonation of his teenage son for a bet.

Now, Harrington likes the beautiful game as much as the next person and makes no claim to be the most stylish guest at the boat club – lilac espadrilles aside – but the psychology of some chaps needing to prove that they are the biggest Sheffield Wednesday supporters that the world has ever seen is enduringly baffling.

Often garish and ugly, replica shirts are probably the least comfortable thing to wear when temperatures are pounding 35 degrees and higher – itchy, sponsor-splattered knits of polyester.

They are also what 12-year-olds wear when it’s not a matchday.

But woe betide the shuddering prospect that somebody, somewhere might fly home not knowing that the supporters of Sunderland had been there, or that Oldham Athletic will never, ever surrender.