MY pal's daughter has started using his razor to shave under her arms, but it's not for any of the more obvious female reasons that you might expect. No, she says she has discovered that shaving stops her sticking to the velcro fastenings on her boyfriend's shell suit.

It has become the uniform of a generation, has the shell suit, and my pal's kids are among the thousands who have joined up. When they first came into fashion among Scotland's youngsters, some older, disapproving citizens were heard to tut-tut and remark that tortoises in Glasgow must have become an endangered species.

It was ever thus, the generation gap.

I remember my parents' reaction to the various fashion stages I went through, such as winkle pickers and boots with buckles; sitting in the bath wearing my new jeans to make them skin-tight; shoulder-length hair; my parka, with fur-lined hood, and my Lambretta scooter with all the flash extras that doubled its weight.

Lassies wore back-combed beehive hairstyles, tight jumpers and skirts and high heels. Hot pants were something lassies had, not wore. Actually, hot pants helped them run faster, and very often they needed to.

We only ever wore tracksuits for sport.

Nowadays, the story goes that seeing a Glasgow kid wearing a real suit will generally be followed by the words: "Will the defendant please stand."

MY pal's kids probably take their fashion sense from their parents. In their younger days, he and The Wicked Witch of the East thought they were trendies, too.

My pal liked to dress up in women's clothes. The Wicked Witch was forced to concede that the fight for equality had to include accepting the fact her partner was a cross-dresser.

What she couldn't endure, however, and which had her mortified, was the fact that my pal looked so much better wearing her clobber than she did.

Their son has spiked red, green and blue hair, a nose ring, trademark Goth black gear, and attitude - and he is OK, a nice lad. But, then, I don't have a daughter.

"I don't really like to dress like this," he confessed to me one day, "but it guarantees my parents won't ever want to take me anywhere."

We were walking up Buchanan Street, and an old drunk accosted us for a handout, and was fair taken with the boy's colourful plumage.

"Hey, big man," he laughed, in that Glasgow drunk stand-up comedian kind of way. "I once got blitzed and had sex with a parrot. You look like my long-lost son."

M Y young friend with the multi-coloured mop - along with his shell-suited, Burberry baseball-capped and hoodie contemporaries - elicits wildly different reactions from us older generation.

Most common among those feelings is fear, distrust, disdain, humour and downright bemusement.

According to one Christopher Harvie, a Fife MSP for the Nats, our kids are the worst-dressed young folk in Europe, thanks to the "ugliest clothes worn by anyone on the entire continent".

For sartorial superiority, the 63-year-old Professor Harvie points to Germany, where he was a lecturer for almost 30 years, and where "Bavarian kids rarely wear anything other than knickerbockers".

There's no answer to that - certainly not in Cambuslang, sunshine - so I'll leave it to the late great Tommy Cooper.

"I went into an ice cream parlour. The assistant said: Knickerbocker glory?' And I said: I do get a certain amount of freedom in these trousers, yes'."

Meanwhile, The Wicked Witch still has the beehive hairdo and the jumpers so tight it would make your eyes water.

I swear one day last week I could read the expiry date on her silicone implants.