A leggy stroll around Launceston reveals the uptake of hotpants for men.

TV reporter Del Cooper is in Launceston in Cornwall modelling the latest fashion for men in the skimpy shape of the hot pant. The reporter chooses a quiet Cornish market town to unleash the sight of his legs on unsuspecting shoppers with some surprising objectifying comments! Several designers and fashion houses launch short shorts including Dorothée Bis, Krizia's Mariuccia Mandelli and Mary Quant.

Hotpants as a must-have fashion item really take off in 1970 and help symbolise the decade. They have made a fashion appearance in most decades ever since but after a seventies heyday of hotpants for men, mostly the cut-off jean version, they never really returned as short as the originals and always remain more popular as an item of clothing for women. The fashion did spill over into sportswear with shorts getting tighter and shorter. The advent in the eighties of low-rise baggy long shorts thought to have come from children in the USA wearing second hand clothes or oversized hand-me-downs took hot pants for men off the fashion agenda.