IT HAS been branded the must-have fashion accessory of the year by one of the publishing industry's top style magazines for men.

The cravat?

The Bay City Rollers tartan trousers perhaps?

Or even the tank top.

No, I'm afraid it's far worse than that.

The moustache is back.

Style bible GQ - a magazine for which I had the utmost respect until this moment - has declared that the dreaded 'tache is making a comeback and we should ALL endeavour to grow one, especially the men.

It's all part of a fundraising campaign called Tacheback, launched by the male cancer charity Everyman, who are asking us to grow a moustache from September 1 for a month and raise money for their cause.

And you know? I am sorely tempted.

I started growing a moustache at the age of 15, in the halcyon days when a fine bush under the nose was a sign of a man's virulence and ability to put up shelves, drink pints of pale ale and have his wife make him a cooked breakfast every morning.

It may have been a rather wispy pathetic effort, which from a few yards away made onlookers think that my eyebrows had simply come down for a drink.

I would love to say that it made my look like Tom Selleck or Errol Flynn, but over the years, it grew, albeit like a parched lawn, until I looked like one of the Mexican bandits who gets shot by Clint Eastwood in the first three minutes of a spaghetti Western.

When comedy writer and performer Steve Coogan unveiled a new character post-Alan Partridge - a moustachioed Portugese crooner called Tony Ferrino, my younger brother sincerely believed it was me.

The end came when a friend who also possessed a 'tache informed me that he had shaved his off the night before after being asked to dance in a nightclub by a bloke who looked like his Dad.

Now the temptation may be too much to bear, especially as I also appear to find shaving the upper part of my lip the most difficult of my depilatory tasks and generally end up looking like a victim in a Sam Peckinpah film with half a toilet roll stuck to my face.

But if I am to embark on this charitable tale of derring-do - something far more challenging than any abseil, bungee jump or soak in a bathful of baked beans - I will need support.

A challenge therefore goes out today to my Echo colleagues to find nine other good men and true to join me in this charitable endeavour.

A bottle of finest Champagne and a Gillette Mach 3 razor to the best moustache of the lot.