Is it just me or is the sight of an Englishman on a bike faintly absurd? Across the country, sports fans cheered Scot Chris Hoy as he went round and round very fast without getting so dizzy that he fell off. Good on him and his murderous-looking quads. On the downside, his triple gold seems almost certain to encourage far too many tubby English thirty and fortysomethings back into the narrow leather saddles that they abandoned in their twenties for a comfortable car and the prospect of children.

I don't mind the enthusiast in baggy tweed trousers and bicycle clips so much - it is a way for him to get sweaty without bothering the wife. Infinitely worse are the helmeted, Lycra-clad, Masai-buttocked colleagues who bounce self-righteously into the office, daring you to snicker. The Englishman and his bicycle in all their glory - sorry, it's just not sexy.

What goes through their polycarbonate covered heads as the biking brotherhood crouch over their handlebars and push off to work? “I will get there faster, cheaper and more healthily. I will live longer and prosper”. Cyclists, after all, specialise in making everybody else around them feel bad; beating their chests to tell the world: “Provided that bendy-bus doesn't kill me first, I am going to live longer than you because I deserve to.”

Cyclists deny this. They tell me that the attractions are the fresh air, endorphins, benefits to the cardiovascular system, the sheer distances they can cover - and, of course, a high-tech, gleaming machine whirring away between their shaved legs. Worthy enough reasons. But have they seen themselves?

David Cameron and Boris Johnson are not helping the cause of men on bikes. Politics and bikes don't mix - somebody tell the Tories to get back into their gas-guzzling cars. They might die a bit sooner but they would lose fewer votes. Cameron's bicycle is a permanent source of embarrassment. His adventures so far have included cycling to the Commons with an official car behind him carrying his papers, a clean shirt and polished shoes; the revelation that he cycles only once a week anyway; and ignoring a red light and cycling the wrong way up a one-way street.

In the book Cameron on Cameron: Conversations with Dylan Jones, the Tory leader admits that allowing his official driver to take some of his papers to work while he cycled there was one of his biggest mistakes and something that he regretted (he particularly regretted getting caught, I imagine). The same book reveals that “security people” came to see him and told him that he couldn't ride his bicycle if he became Prime Minister “unless it's unexpected”. Most recently, Cameron had his bicycle stolen after he popped into Tesco to pick up some groceries. He had chained the bike to a bollard. Thieves lifted the bike off the bollard, complete with lock, and carried it away.

This man who thinks, “I know, I'll just chain my bike to this handy 2ft bollard”, by the way, may soon be in charge of the country. Presumably if he had two carloads of protection officers with him on his “unexpected” cycle ride, he would be less likely to fall victim to entirely-to-be-expected bicycle thieves.

The Mayor of London has had six bicycles stolen. I wonder whether colleagues are trying to tell him something? At a meeting of Islington Cyclists' Action Group last year, Boris Johnson said that Navy SEALs should go through the windows of bicycle thieves and “show them what it's all about”. Take their bicycles away and here comes the “nasty party” - on foot, presumably, since its members can't manage to keep hold of their bikes. And why are Tories so happy to ride bicycles anyway? Because it proves that they have the energy to govern? Or because a bicycle is as near as they can get to a horse in the city?

You deliver groceries on a bike, and papers and sausages - surely you don't deliver a programme for government. I'm sorry but, if new Conservatives are cycling, how much more proof do you need that cycling is just not trendy?

Physically it's not a good look. Politically it's a liability. And cyclists generally, Conservative or otherwise, are deeply annoying to the noncycling majority.

In the country, if the rain lets up for a few minutes in the great British summer, you jump into the car to go somewhere - and if it isn't a tractor in front of you, it's a caravan; and if it isn't a caravan, it's a rosary of puce-faced, calf-bulging cyclists. These sadists make you drive for mile after mile of bendy road watching their muddy bottoms, before a straight stretch gives you enough time to overtake without killing at least one of them. And I can only drive by in awe when I see an entire family out cycling together - particularly those parents who cycle with the five-year-old on the back seat of daddy's tandem, the eight and nine-year-olds three miles ahead on their own bikes with tinsel wands, and a panting mummy at the rear pulling baby Alice in a trailer. An entire gene pool there for the taking. They are obviously parents with far steadier nerves than I have. I would spend the entire journey screaming hysterically: “Keep in, boys. I said KEEP IN”.

Which is worse, I wonder - the smug commuter cyclist or the fitness hobby cyclist? It's a close-run thing. And, God help us, there is likely to be more of both of them after Britain's 12 cycling track medals. London already has a cycling event planned for next month in which 100,000 people are expected to ride.

There are, obviously, cycling heroes - Scotland's Hoy; America's Lance Armstrong, who beat testicular cancer and went on to win the Tour de France seven times; indeed, anyone who has ever worn the yellow jumper. But the sad Englishman in the too-tight shorts, pedalling away in front, won't be hearing my applause any time soon.

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