A CERTAIN omnipresent supermarket chain will now sell you a pair of perfectly serviceable denims for less than the price of an armful of pre-roasted chickens.

To say that flushes any notion of sartorial rebellion down the toilet is an understatement on a par with suggesting that the forced switch to energy saving light bulbs might slightly annoy people who use those weird candle-shaped bulbs in their wall lights.

The trouser which once hugged the legs of James Dean doesn't look so desperado when it's alongside barm cakes and washing up liquid.

Essentials

But for people of a certain age, a decent pair of jeans will forever leave them feeling rock and roll. As someone who predates cargo pants, I'm firmly in that camp.

The first £20 I ever earned selling shoes in the Arndale was spent on a pair of Levi's 501.

They were far more than a glittering prize at the end of a month-like baptism into the ways of work: they were the trousers which told the world I was a man.

I may have looked more like Nick Cotton than Nick Kamen, but within the confines of my teenage mind, I was one cool dude.

Every important night out - usually a date with a bottle of cider in the park - began with me taking the iron to my `precisely-rolled turn ups.

Personal look

I was the Rebel Without A Cause, the only Smiths fan in a school where most of the Neanderthals understood only violence and Kappa tracksuits.

It meant arguments with bouncers who wouldn't allow me into pubs because there was a dress code which dictated only dim-wits in Fosters pants and their knuckles scraping along the floor were allowed in.

The drunken argument was always the same and always guaranteed to absolutely ensure that I wouldn't be paying top whack for a pint of Stella in that particular establishment.

"You're sayin' I'm scruffy, yet you'll be pulling someone's ear out of the mouth of the guy in Farah slacks before the night's out," I'd say, before walloping off to the kebab shop.

The romance died the day that some bright spark decided that jeans were "smart casual" and begun stitching the names of Italian designers inside them.

The rebel uniform had been stolen, cleaned up a bit and given an expensive label.

Designer trap

Today you can drink in Manchester's trendiest bars in jeans and nobody bats an eye.

Fortunately for the people who stole my style, most of my acts of rebellion now entail one too many cans of Guinness in front of the telly on a Saturday night.

But there's a part of me that clings to the dream. I can no longer fit into those Levi's and I might be eating supermarket chicken rather than swallowing my pride, but I'll still be wearing my jeans.

And woe betide any Buddha-like bouncer who wounds up outside my house on a Saturday night with nowhere to watch Casualty.

Sorry mate, scruffy buggers only tonight, have you tried the Undertakers Arms.

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