NIKOLA Tesla: now there’s a clever bloke. Not only did he make a massive contribution to the development of electricity, about a century ago, but he also made some amazingly accurate predictions.

As long ago as 1926 he foresaw the advent of wireless telephones that, he said, would sound as clear as if we were talking face to face, adding that when these new devices were invented, they would be so small that “a man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket”.

In other words, he saw iPhones coming, decades before Apple started making them.

So what a shame he got it so hopelessly wrong about vests.

What were you thinking, Nikola?

I don’t know about you, but I only know one person who still wears (or will admit to wearing) a vest, so we are hardly likely to be carrying our iPhones in our vest pockets.

To be fair to him, Tesla was a Serbian American, so his understanding of what a vest is may not be the same as ours. Some Americans define a vest as what we call a waistcoat. But even if we make this allowance, he was still wrong because there aren’t many people walking around in waistcoats, either.

I am reminded of vests every October when the great annual debate begins in our house. You probably have the same one in yours.

It’s all about whether it is time to turn the heating back on, or whether we can hang on a bit longer.

I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing, and cold is mostly in the mind, so my policy is always to put on more clothes if you are chilly, especially when the alternative is lining the pockets of greedy energy companies, who have had enough of our money.

But even I can’t see the point of vests, which are surely the least efficient precaution ever against the winter.

I can’t imagine why anybody would wear such a pointless garment.

The only explanation I can think of is vests are the last remnants of an over-reaction to the onset of winter that has been handed down the generations.

As well as making us wear vests and trying to get us to wear slippers, our mothers dressed us in ridiculously heavy duffle coats and thick woollen gloves, as if we were going to winter on Neptune. If we had let them, I swear they would have smeared us in goose fat, too, and put us in long johns.

But as I’ve got older, I’ve realised that while we have convinced ourselves that we live in a cold country, in fact it is remarkably mild.

Apart from during the handful of hard frosts we get every year, all those extra layers were – and still are – unnecessary.

In the winter I often go out without a coat on, unless rain is on the way, because a jumper is usually plenty warm enough, and I only need gloves on my bike.

Unless there has been a major shift in our climate, by ten degrees or more – something I doubt very much – winters must have been just as mild in our parents’ day as they are today.

So not only was there no need for vests, but also most of the other lengths they went to to keep warm.

I’m not saying we don’t get cold snaps or that some vulnerable people do feel the cold and need to take proper precautions, but most of the rest of us should man up, including women.

So keep your hands off that boiler, Mrs Carter.