Who says Britons are apathetic? It's all a question of priorities. We can hardly muster so much as a shrug as our leaders drag us toward Armageddon, but dangle something fashionable in front of us and we'll gladly queue round the block and beat our own neighbours to death for a chance to momentarily brush against its hem.

Last week, hardcore idiots across the nation stood in rows at dawn, desperate to get their hands on a cotton bag with "I'm not a plastic bag" printed on it. Right now, a group of determined oafs is camping out in preparation for tomorrow's launch of the new Kate Moss clothing range at Topshop. If Grazia magazine printed an article declaring it fashionable to smack yourself in the forehead with a limited-edition ball-pein hammer designed exclusively by Coleen McLoughlin, a mob would form outside your local B&Q before the ink had dried on the page.

It's a mystery to me. If the whole point of fashion is to distinguish yourself from the herd, why queue up to be part of it? Am I missing something here? I suspect not. But then I don't "get" fashion. I once went out with a girl who was obsessed with dressing up; a real clothes nerd. While we were together, she developed a serious jeans habit. Each week, a new pair. She'd bring them home and show them to me, bubbling with excitement. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between one pair and the next, and I was staring pretty hard, in case there was a quiz at the end of the relationship. Doubtless a fellow jeans spod would've been thrilled by her purchases. To me, it was like trying to spot minute discrepancies between two marked playing cards. She virtually bankrupted herself buying items of clothing that looked identical to anyone other than an similarly obsessed expert. They were only jeans! Blue bloody trousers!

As far as I can tell, fashion is nothing more than a handy visual system that gives people with no personality some palpable criteria to judge each other by. Anyone who regularly contemplates clothing for more than five minutes a week is wasting their life as surely as the most lethargic, do-nothing heroin addict imaginable. Yet despite this, interest in fashion seems to be spreading.

Take men. Youngish men. Men in their late 20s and early 30s. What's happened to them? They've had a collective makeover. Not so long ago they were content to slob around in vaguely ironic T-shirts. Suddenly they've lost nine stone. They wear trousers so thin you could mistake them for shoelaces. Cardigans and flat caps. Flat caps! Talk about trying far too hard to please. Every time I see some flatcapped little tit bobbing down the pavement towards me I have to fight the urge to rip that cloth disc off their head and toss it, Frisbee-style, way up on to the nearest roof. Just to see what their face does. They'd probably just stand there, blinking dumbly, like a robot awaiting instructions. These people are hopelessly lost.

What exactly is the thought process that leads someone to buy a bloody cap anyway? Or any a-la-mode accoutrement, come to that? Is it motivated by fear? Do you see someone influential wearing something preposterous and find yourself irresistibly compelled to follow suit, like a crybaby sheep? Or is there a secret factsheet being handed round - one that lists all the elements of the unofficial tosser's uniform and commands you to buy them? Who's issuing the orders here? And why does everyone seem so eager to obey?

Youngish men have gone all wrong. But the younger ones are worse. They've got haircuts now. Quirky, angular, idiosyncratic haircuts; haircuts like elaborate designer lampshades; haircuts they've downloaded off the internet. Some of them wear eyeliner. Presumably they're aiming somewhere between Russell Brand and Marc Bolan, but somehow end up resembling Muppet Baby incarnations of Danny the dealer from Withnail and I.

Jesus Christ. That's another popular look: Jesus Christ. I went to a gig the other day and saw at least 18 Christs, none of them a day over 25. At one point, three of them stood in a corner chatting to each other. I thought I'd stumbled across a religious triptych. God knows what they were talking about. Eyeliner tips, probably. Or parables.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for freedom of expression. I just don't understand why people choose to flaunt their individuality by dressing alike. Maybe I'm just jealous. I've got less fashion sense than the average PC World sales assistant. I shop in the high street, and only then under duress. (Incidentally, is it just me, or would it be handy if clothes had "recommended age group" labels, alongside the waist, chest, and leg measurements? It'd stop literally thousands of people from making fools of themselves each year.)

I hate shopping for clothes so much, I wear things until they fall apart. Right now, the soles of my shoes have worn so thin I can stand on a penny and tell if it's heads or tails. And I've only got the one pair, which means when they finally disintegrate I'm going to have to shamble into the nearest shoe shop looking like a tramp. I may not have dignity, but I've got my priorities right. And those caps wouldn't suit me anyway. I've got a head like a loaf of wet bread.

· This week Charlie went to the premiere of 28 Weeks Later using someone else's ticket, which meant he spent the first 15 minutes worried he might get thown out (he wasn't): "The most relentless horror film in years - I felt like I'd been beaten up for 90 minutes. In a good way." Charlie caught up with The Wire: "So good it makes everything else on TV look dull."