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There is a moment that comes to every man who takes up cycling in middle age.

You catch sight of yourself in a shop window, mid-glide, in full skin-tight regalia – and you understand, with crystal clarity, that you have become a sausage man.

A grown man encased in synthetic stretchy fabrics, intimately hugging all your contours, freewheeling past Gail’s at 18mph.

Which brings me to Mehmet Fatih Cicekli, until recently the 50-year-old governor of Ardahan province in north-eastern Turkey, and now the patron saint of men who got carried away.

Mr Cicekli was fired from office this month after posting videos of himself out on his bicycle in black tights and a snug red top. One MP suggested he be issued with a fig leaf. Another remarked that a governor in leggings would be taken seriously by nobody – not the public, not his own staff.

The governor’s defence was that he does sport in sports clothes. Ten thousand people have signed a petition demanding his return.

I have every sympathy. I am a 58-year-old man and own more Lycra than Beyonce’s dance troupe. But I’m afraid the fig-leaf guy was right.

Let me establish my credentials. I came to cycling properly in my early 40s. While training for my first half marathon I injured myself. Running was excruciating – but cycling was pain-free.

I am a 58-year-old man and own more Lycra than Beyonce’s dance troupe, says Ian Tucker

Mehmet Fatih Cicekli, until recently the 50-year-old governor of Ardahan province in north-eastern Turkey, is now the patron saint of men who got carried away

So, armed with a tax-free Cycle To Work voucher, I purchased my first decent road bike, a steel one, in a lovely British racing green colour.

Then like knotweed cycling began to take over my life. I morphed into a MAMIL (middle-aged man in Lycra).

To begin with it was laps of London’s Richmond Park – but soon, armed with pockets of bananas and guided by routes downloaded from the internet, I was discovering that in an hour or so from my front door I could be pedalling along quiet country lanes, surrounded by green fields, hedgerows spinning by, phone off buried in a jersey pocket and only the occasional near-death encounter with a SUV driver to worry about.

Since then my cycling achievements have included riding from Manchester to London, from Munich to Venice and, one Sunday in February, 11 miles in the wrong direction rather than admit I needed to look at the map.

My transition to cycling was, in part, enabled by the clothing. Back then I considered myself someone who cared about style and had a wardrobe of minimalist Selfridges purchases to prove it.

I wasn’t a fan of the gaudy, sponsor’s logo-splattered look of pro cycling attire but there were a few embryonic brands who offered classic, retro-looking garments. These brands were my gateway.

Rumours that I started cycling with padded shorts worn discreetly under baggy ones – the mullet of cycle wear: business outside, comfort within – are unfounded. I went commando from the start – VPL (visible panty line) is the cycling equivalent of leaving the price tag on.

Next came the jerseys, skin-tight with pockets on the back because you need somewhere for a banana.

Then a gilet and arm warmers for the chilly mornings, a rain jacket for showers. Things with long sleeves, some with short, some insulated, full-length tights for the winter. Even in Essex you can experience four seasons in a day.

Before long, one Tuesday evening, you find yourself online buying overshoes, which are shoes for your shoes, and you realise you’ve become the man that three years ago you would have crossed the road to avoid.

But here is the awkward part: on the bike, it all works. This is the thing the scoffers never quite grasp. Lycra might be a costume, but it’s also equipment.

Loose cotton flaps, soaks and chafes; seams in the wrong place after 50 miles will teach you things about yourself you’d rather not know. The kit is snug for the same reason a wetsuit is – because the elements must be persuaded to let you through.

On the open road, in the rain, at the top of a climb with your heart going like a moth in a lampshade, Lycra is not vanity. It is sound engineering.

The trouble starts the instant you stop pedalling. Because clothing is always about context. A hard hat on a building site says competence. A hard hat in the restaurant says something else entirely. Nobody objects to a wetsuit, provided water is near. Flip-flops are wonderful but unforgivable at a funeral.

We understand this instinctively about hats and shoes, and yet a certain type of man will stand in a village tea shop in skin-tight polyester, perspiring quietly on to the linoleum, wondering why the lady behind the counter is addressing his forehead with total determination.

The office is a stealthy battlefield. I’ve worked in newsrooms for 20-odd years, and the men who cycled in did not stroll to their desks in triumph. They moved with the furtive urgency of a spy making a drop, kit bag clutched to the chest, eyes down, straight past the news desk and into the changing room.

A friend who works in the City opts to work from home rather than perform this walk of cyclist shame each morning. However, some bosses are fine with close-fitting sports clothing in the workplace. A senior civil servant friend recalls how Liz Truss was relaxed about taking meetings with guys in cycling shorts.

Judging by his Instagram snaps, Mr Cicekli’s cycling wardrobe is quite old school: just black and red. Bib shorts (super-tight with a built-in seat pad and shoulder straps to keep everything in place) these days are anything but black: first it was navy, then dark green, then plum, teal, beige, and now even white is making an appearance.

In fact, the problem with white is rather too much appears. The tighter the fit, the lighter the colour, the more light and shade, the more information is on display.

Which is what our Turkish friend forgot, and what the best political cyclists have always understood.

Boris Johnson – say what you like, and people do – got this exactly right. He rode a bicycle for years in a suit, tie over one shoulder, helmet perched at a jaunty and probably ineffective angle, trousers doing something peculiar at the ankle. He looked ridiculous, and that was the point: he was a person on a bike, not a cyclist.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Raleigh bicycle and sensible anorak ensemble offended precisely nobody, other than motorists in a hurry. Neither of them ever presented the electorate with a full topographical survey.

The real point has nothing to do with modesty. Authority is decorated. A mayor has a chain, a judge has a wig, a general has a chest of medals – all of it heavy, absurd, deliberately impersonal, and all of it doing the same job: making the person beneath it disappear so the rank can be seen.

Every civilisation that has ever handed someone power has also handed them something ridiculous to wear while they held it. Lycra is the exact inverse. It conceals not a thing and symbolises zilch.

There is no returning to the majesty of the state once everyone in the room has seen the governor’s contours and is thinking about lunch while trying not to.

So no, Mr Cicekli, sport is not the problem. Nor is the bicycle. Ride, and ride gloriously – I hope the petition works and I’d happily do a lap of Ardahan alongside you.

But then get changed. Because Lycra is for the road and only the road. From the moment you dismount, you are just a man in a shiny leotard holding a banana.