You know that bit in the remake of Casino Royale when Daniel Craig’s James Bond steps out of the waves wearing a skimpy light blue swimming costume?

I have that exact same pair of budgie-smugglers. I didn’t buy them – an enterprising PR firm sent them to me a few years ago, when the movie was out. I have ever since been banned from even trying them on.

But this hot weather we’ve been having prompted me to break the embargo – a largely self-imposed ban, but one fully supported by my wife and children. Last weekend, as the sun shone down, I searched through my wardrobe for something to wear which would allow me to catch some rays. I settled on a pair of long-ish swimming shorts, plastered on the sun-block and retired to the garden to do a spot of quiet reading.

But as the sun beat down, I considered that I was not getting the best opportunity to develop an attractive bronzing. My shorts came down to my knees. I was facing the prospect of brown shins and white thighs, like a bottle of milk that’s been left out in the sun and started to curdle from the bottom up. So I went back up to the bedroom to see what else I could find.

And there were the Daniel Craig shorts, stuffed behind some socks. It may have been that I’d already had too much sun at that point, but for whatever reason the shorts seemed a brilliant idea. Reader, I put them on.

I imagine that when Craig did that first take, emerging from the surf, the film crew fell silent as they realised they’d shot an iconic image. It was the same sort of silence that fell over the garden as I stepped, Bond-like, on to the patio. But for precisely the opposite reasons.

“Oh. My. God,” said my wife softly, then focused her concentration back on her book, as though she was trying to pretend she hadn’t seen me.

My eight-year-old daughter scrutinised me. “That’s just wrong,” she said.

I have to admit that I don’t have a Daniel Craig physique. To be honest, I don’t even have a Wendy Craig physique. But it was in the privacy of my own garden, after all. My wife pointed out mildly: “The neighbours can see you.”

I glanced up at the house next door. “Only if they crane their necks out of that window.” I pulled the sun-lounger as far near the fence as it would go, settled down, and promptly went to sleep.

When I woke up, I found I had managed, as was the plan, to get more sun to my legs. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten to slap on some more sun-block on the areas formerly covered by my longer shorts, leaving me with two angry red patches from my knees upwards.

I now have brown bits, red bits and white bits on my lower body, a bit like a Fab lolly gone wrong. Next time, I think I’ll stick to the full tuxedo.