BEING a devotee of the pun, my eye was caught this week by the headline on a press release which read Happiness: it’s not in the jeans.

Apparently, the choice of outfit donned in our leisure time is strongly affected by our mood.

I’ve always thought that the ubiquitous denim jeans were the item of casual wear automatically picked out of the wardrobe no matter how we feel but no, I now learn that they are what most people wear when they are depressed, psychologists at the University of Hertfordshire have found.

It’s when they are in a blue mood I suppose.

One hundred women were asked what they wore when feeling depressed and more than half of them said jeans. Only a third would put on jeans when feeling happy.

Only two per cent of them would wear a baggy top when they feel good but this shoots up to more than half when they are low.

The ladies also said they would be ten times more likely to put on a favourite dress when happy than when depressed.

The psychologists came to the conclusion that the strong link between clothing and mood suggested we should put on clothes that we associate with happiness, even when feeling low, which sounds sensible to me, but don’t tell denim jeans manufacturers who could become suicidal if that idea was taken up in a big way.

I can’t see it happening, which means jeans will continue to be seen here, there and everywhere.

What they contain in the pockets is worrying me after viewing the results of another piece of research.

This reveals that money contains more germs than the average toilet seat. Eighty per cent of UK notes and just slightly fewer credit cards tested had some traces of bacteria while a quarter of notes and nearly half of credit cards were found to have high levels of bacteria including E.coli and MRSA.

That will be of little concern to the misers of this world who rarely dip their hands into their pockets but for the rest of us, the term dirty cash takes on a new meaning.

Something which must have cost a lot of money is a robot which has been nicknamed Cheetah after setting a new world speed record.

According to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the machine has clocked up 18mph on a laboratory treadmill, beating the previous record set by a robot with legs by nearly five mph.

The agency said the project was aimed at developing robots designed to “more effectively assist war fighters across a greater range of missions”. It really wants “to understand what is possible for fast-moving robots”.

That sounds a bit too sinister for me. I think the robots should be developed for sporting purposes.

Just imagine seeing them lined up for the 100 metres final at the mechanical Olympics.

One of them could be the robot called Cheetah. It is made of metal and is headless so has no brain. I suggest it be renamed Insane Bolt.