Nettled by G-Star's green jeans

The Sceptic Tank still occasionally succumbs to nightmares about playground bullies and their penchant for so-called nettle boxer shorts. Nettle flannels (stinging nettles rubbed on your legs) and nettle baths (pushed into a ditch full of nettles) were bad, but nettle boxer shorts were the worst, for obvious reasons. Kids are great, aren't they?

So it is with a degree of trepidation that the Tank welcomes the news that clothes manufacturer G-Star is working on a new designer denim that combines organic cotton with nettle plant fibres.

I'm sure it will be very comfortable and it will certainly be green, given the environmental impacts of cotton plantations, but what about the repressed childhood traumas? What about them?

Then again, with the Middle East alight and some analysts predicting oil prices could hit $220 a barrel, the ability to make clothes from plants found in ditches could prove an increasingly valuable skill in the coming months.