A story in The Times last week about Durham University’s plan to drag law students from their beds (or bars) in time for an 8am start on their studies brought an amusing response in the letters column from one-time Oxford undergraduate Mark Burgess, of London NW3.

He wrote: “Your report on early lectures reminded me that as a student I once overslept for a tutorial with Professor John Batchelor of New College, Oxford. It was for 5pm.”

Elsewhere on The Times’s letters pages last week was discussion about the wearing of cravats in which, as a long-time devotee of these unfashionable adornments, I was naturally interested.

The subject was first aired in a letter from Peter Ruck printed in Monday’s newspaper, which I did not buy owing to my disinclination – as I mentioned here recently – to endure a rehash of news read the previous day in the Mail On Sunday.

The gist of Mr Ruff’s argument can be gathered, however, from the content of letters printed on the two subsequent days.

On Tuesday, James Priestley, of West Yorkshire, wrote: “A more adventurous and effective solution to the scrawny-neck problem than the cravat would be the ruff. This Elizabethan and Jacobean status symbol has greater coverage and would compel wearers to keep their chin up and adopt a proud, British pose as the country is engulfed by Brexit. It could become a symbol of the new Elizabethan age.”

On Wednesday, Andy Cole, of Cleethorpes, wrote: “Peter Ruck appeals for that most British of garments, the cravat, to make a comeback. The cravat is not British at all. Its name is an Anglicised form of Hrvatska, the Croatian name for their country, whose mercenaries wore cravats in battle in the 17th-century.”

I was interested to see cravat-wearing being urged as a disguise for a scrawny neck, for this was precisely the reason – besides some of the colours and patterns looking good – that I began sporting them a decade or so ago.

Having lost a bit of weight, I was dismayed to see skin hanging in folds beneath my chin. These were hidden behind a buttoned-up shirt with tie in place. But who wants to wear a tie all the time? OK. Jacob Rees-Mogg, but he’s a one-off.

A cravat’s value in hiding a turkey neck is neatly illustrated in the photograph above, which was taken by my friend KT Bruce at the Gibraltar Literary Festival two years ago.

The Just a Minute host Nicholas Parsons – one of the country’s most famous cravat wearers – looks smart and completely unscrawny with his elegant blue one in place.

By contrast, Antony Worrall Thompson, in his open-neck shirt, is showing precisely what one might wish to conceal.

I was in Gibraltar for the festival and fell to discussing cravats with the then 92-year-old Nicholas.

Tidiness in the neck region was a very important consideration for him.

As he had told an audience at an earlier literary festival, in Edinburgh: “I started wearing cravats a number of years ago and now I’d really rather like to bring back the cravat.

“I think the open-necked shirt is really rather ugly. [The neck] is not the most attractive part of a man’s anatomy.”

Nicholas is very well supplied with cravats. He had more than he could possibly need, he told me, when a friend died and bequeathed him another large collection.

Many of my cravats are likely to have come from dead men, too, since they were acquired in large part from charity shops.

Rosemarie and her mother Olive have for years been assiduous in seeking them out for me.

A star purchase was a brand new Ede & Ravenscroft number in blue silk, found in a shop in Kidlington. Rosemarie paid a couple of quid for something that would have been bought originally for perhaps £50.

I have paid £30 and more for new cravats acquired at gentleman’s outfitters like Shepherd and Woodward in Oxford and Keates of Witney.

Some years ago, I suggested to Nick Wheeler, the boss of Charles Tyrwhitt, a very dignified outfitters, that they should start selling them, but he so far hasn’t taken the hint.

I think he is missing a trick.