Big Lebowski fashion in Dublin.

Jeff Bridges as the 'dude' and John Goodman in The Big Lebowski.

Still from Pyjama Girls.

If you know me, and you knew me well, you would know that one of my pet hates is the wearing of slippers – I don't like to wear them I think they're unhygienic and they are unsightly.

I had to buy a pair once when I went in to hospital. It was the only time, so far, that I have been an inpatient and I found the wearing of slippers tiresome.

The same slippers went on every day next to the skin and some of those other patients' feet stunk. I don't know about mine, at the time, but they have never stunk nor stank or even ponged.

I was in hospital for two weeks and the only thing they did to me was to remove a ganglion from my wrist but as it was an air force hospital at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, the hospital had to take a certain amount of people in from the surrounding area; and as I was one of those. I suppose they kept me in all that time to justify their existence.

At the time I had worked in 13 episodes of Crossroads, a daily evening soap opera which everybody seemed to watch, and I was in a commercial for Guinness which was shown a few times every evening; so I was kind of recognisable from those two things. When one of the officers came and introduced himself to me he said “Ah an actor. We have a jockey in the bums and gums!”

What an actor and a jockey have in common is beyond me.

Of course I said “Bums and Gums?”

“Yes” he said “in the next ward: haemorrhoids and wisdom teeth.”

In those days we had a butcher who would come around in his van and we would buy meat from our door which meant that people would come out, into the street, wearing their slippers – apart from me.

I would always wear street shoes around the house and I still do. If I have been out in the rain with wellington boots, or I am wearing muddy boots I take them off, of course, and if I am sitting watching television I might slip my shoes off.

I just don't think slippers should be worn outside of the bedroom, never mind the rest of the house, and it is a terrible way to greet visitors.

The wearing of slippers in the street spread further to the corner shop and soon people got onto buses wearing them and went to wherever they were going wearing them.

Now it seems, in Dublin, the wearing of pyjamas by teenage girls is quite a fashion in the inner city, and has been since just after the turn of this century. Someone made a movie about it last year, a documentary, which was shown at a New York film festival in October.

The idea of the wearing of pyjamas came from the fact that the girls live in blocks of flats. They consider it normal to go from door to door in the building, still wearing their night wear, and that extended to getting on the bus, as with the slippers, and then going into wherever they were going when they got off at the other end – mostly the dole office apparently.

Pyjama wearing is now banned from schools and dole offices, it provokes furious radio debates and online rants in Dublin.

I remember years ago my wife bought a pair of calico pyjamas for me; she thought I might take to wearing them but that is something else I have never used – just a pair of shorts. So I took to wearing those pyjamas around the house – my daughter eventually took them and she wore them to go out.

But this is nothing new to the fans of The Big Lebowski – the dude always wore them and there he is above with John Goodman.

I used to take breakfast at Hugo's in West Hollywood which was also frequented by movies stars and actors and Jeff Goldblum would come in for his breakfast wearing what looked like a pair of underpants, a singlet and wearing a pair of flip flops.

He would say hello, smile but he was wearing underpants and a vest!!!!!

Oh by the way – I hate I hate flip flops too.