'I simply used my moustache as nature intended, blew cigar smoke in her face and uttered some words about the Paps of Anu [two hills revered by the ancient Celts as fertility symbols],' says the victor.

Welcome to the third Chap & Hendrick's Olympiad, in Bloomsbury, in the centre of the British capital. 'An audacious sporting day,' according to the promotional literature, 'where athleticism is not required, competitors better judged on their style, intellect, wit and cut of trouser ... showing what the British do best: dressing inappropriately and making buffoons of ourselves.'

The olympiad is half Henley regatta circa 1950, half Bertie Wooster convention. A 1940s garden party meets 20s Chariots of Fire-style sports day. Part burlesque, part theatre, part pantomime, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Monty Pythons' Upper Class Twit of the Year Show. Whatever it is, the olympiad is a burgeoning event. Some 800 spectators are expected, most dandily dressed men and women, plus 80 contestants vying for the golden cravat.

The olympiad is a social offshoot born of a movement spawned by The Chap magazine, which, in a riotously tongue-in-cheek tone, espouses a return to the civility of yesteryear. To quote its campaign manifesto: 'Pleasantness and civility are being discarded as the worthless ephemera of a bygone age - an age when men doffed their hats to the ladies, and children would mind one's Jack Russell while one took a mild and bitter in the hostelry.'

With features on how to maintain a perfect 'tash' and how one's butler should announce names as one flees via the emergency door, The Chap cheekily rails against such modern howlers as chilled lager and bemoans society's lack of manners and shiny brogues. It seeks to show fashionable youth how to 'replace their pidgin ghetto-speak with fruity bons mots and dry witticisms'. It also offers a forum for modern sartorial dilemmas such as what cravat to wear for what occasion and an outlet for 'those enraged at their local branch of Starbucks' refusal to serve scented tobaccos'.

The Chap started in 1999 - by accident. 'We wanted to do a magazine for proper gentlemen, a reaction against the lads mags [such as Loaded and Maxim], so we put an issue together, Xeroxed it and sent it to the press,' says founder and editor Gustav Temple. 'We earned subscriptions and went from there.'

Mr Temple perhaps lives The Chap ideal more than most, wearing swanky attire and a hat every day, unlike those merely dressed up for the olympiad. 'I see myself as the standard bearer. If I set an example, perhaps younger people will take notice and dress better.'

Why does he pine for all things retro?

'When I reached my late 30s I thought there's no dignity wearing the clothes of a youth. You can give up and look old or look like a Pet Shop Boy. Vintage clothes can bring decency to your middling years. The era has an amazing diversity about it - colours, fabrics, styles - far more variety than today's street fashion. The Chap puts that message across, albeit with a touch of irony. We want a society where men offer seats to ladies, wear hats, not baseball caps, and shake hands. There is nothing pompous about being polite.'

So what makes a true chap?

'A superlative wardrobe, a chivalrous manner and a good sense of humour - otherwise you come across as an old fuddy-duddy. Also, there must be a spark of decadence in the soul, a dark side, such as an addiction to laudanum or blackjack. A chap is a construct - part cad, part aristocrat, part dandy, part amateur.'

The Chap's god-head figure is the late Terry-Thomas. 'The archetypal bounder - well-spoken, immaculately dressed, but actually the son of a market trader,' says Mr Temple. 'The Chap has no class allegiance. There's [British actor] David Niven: well-dressed, heroic qualities - he left Hollywood to fight in the war. Then there's Wooster, a fictional chap who needs to be steered on a true course by [his valet] Jeeves [in the P.G. Wodehouse novels]. Cary Grant [another British actor] and Frenchmen such as [poet Charles] Baudelaire, [writer Gustave] Flaubert. Also [British poet and Romanticist] Lord Byron and Beau Brummel [an arbiter of fashion in Regency England who claimed to take five hours to dress and recommended boots be polished with champagne]. George Cole [an actor best known for his role in TV series Minder] is the archetypal spiv.

'I don't think you have to put away the Clash to be a chap. And food? Well, you don't have to eat beef Wellington but, personally, I'd rather [have it], served at the Reform Club by a surly, aged waiter. Tremendous.'

It all sounds a tad right-wing. Not so, says Mr Temple. 'There's a misguided perception we are conservative, right-wing, pretentious. In a way it is more a socialist idea, it believes everyone should be able to be a gentleman, everyone should be able to travel first class.'

It's escapism, he adds, but no more so than dressing any other sort of way. 'We all live out fantasies.'

In modern London there seems to be a creeping rejection of the modern and everyday. The burlesque movement is rampant and there's a thirst for all things 40s and 50s, such as tea dances and swing jazz nights, including events at the International Club or Rakehell's Revels, a vintage music night at the Cafe Royal. Many get their clothes from the sartorial ground zero of chapdom: Fulham - specifically the Old Hat and Bertie Wooster shops, both run by The Chap's wardrobe correspondent, David Saxby.

Everyone at the olympiad seems to smoke a pipe, an implement embodied in The Chap's logo. 'I have about 20 pipes, mostly briars,' says Mr Temple.

'It's an iconic British symbol. It's a bit decadent, especially now you can't smoke anywhere. It's a symbol of where you stand. Old-fashioned but powerful. It's reassuring.'

Torquil Arbuthnot, known as Stephen Holden when at work as an art college administrator, is a fellow founder of The Chap and came up with the idea of the olympiad while carousing one night. When asked what he has against the modern world, the question is answered by Ophelia Hampstead, a chapette divinely adorned in 40s New Look blue floral Dior. 'It's a public reaction to the ceaseless homogenisation of modern English life,' she says.

Mr Arbuthnot interjects: 'A horrid modern world where independent greasy spoons and cafes become Starbucks and tailors become a Next or Primark. It's a rebellion against the dreadful conformity of the modern age. [Chaps are] eccentric types, for want of a better word; mostly those ploughing a lone furrow who, through The Chap, realise they are not alone.'

Mr Arbuthnot is the social secretary of the New Sheridan Club, The Chap's social offshoot, described by Wing Commander Fruity Metcalfe, today's grand judge, as 'a revival of past sensibilities', offering a portal to all things yesteryear, be it a museum display of Bakelite goods or organising an impromptu protest such as Civilise the City, in which chaps walk around London doffing caps at ladies, stomping into Gap and demanding to speak to the resident cutter or asking for lapsang souchong at Starbucks.

More commonly it convenes at a Soho hostelry, the Wheatsheaf, to admire various tweed suits and host talks on London trams or the versatility of wartime camouflage. There are also picnics, boat parties and an annual cricket match, in which a Hirsute XI do battle with leather and willow against a Clean Shaven XI. An event called, of course, 'The Tashes'.

If it all sounds like upper-class hijinks, it isn't. The Chap is determinably anti-class. And there are other societies at the olympiad, too, symbolising the broad church of the vintage movement. There's the Ministry of Burlesque (MoB), a Chap 'sister organisation', though it's not related or affiliated.

The MoB's Diamond Blush, performer and administrator, says, 'I like the whole atmosphere: part tongue in cheek, part serious, well-mannered, polite. And the men make a real effort. It is rare that the men are better dressed - it's usually us women.'

Companion Kitty Claw chimes in: 'I guess the event appeals to my sense of manners. It's very different to normal events, where people just dance or get drunk. Here you can be whoever you want.

It's escapism. People are just playing at that stereotype of the English. Harking back to another time. Nostalgia for a time they did not experience, perhaps.'

Juliana, a young Brazilian waitress, is perplexed by the event: the dressed-up madmen, the antique Fortnum & Mason hampers, the mini pork pies, the gin and tonics with cucumber. 'I'm here with my boyfriend. It is hilarious. Only the English could do this,' she says. 'They are weird, very weird.' I compliment her dress and ask if it is 50s Dior or a 30s tea-dance outfit.

'What? This is from Monsoon.' Ah. I doff my flat cap and take my leave.

Mr Arbuthnot's hat is definitely not from Gap. It's a golden bowler, won in the martini knockout relay, in which teams have to mix a 'scrumptiously rewarding dry martini without the aid of a butler'.

'It's probably the only olympics us British would win,' he says. 'There's no training, no perspiration and no competitiveness.'

But wasn't one competitor running?

'The exuberance of youth, dear boy,' says Mr Arbuthnot. 'He was roundly condemned by the heckling crowd and he slowed down. We can forgive him. Though I'll still pop over, have a word and perhaps administer a good belabouring with my cane.'

As if to emphasise that the proper etiquette of such sports is 'civility and kindness mixed with a touch of caddishness', he takes off his monocle and commends my attire: 'Nice cravat, old boy.'

THE CHAP'S OLYMPIAD, like most olympiads, begins with the ceremonial lighting of a torch. Well, an outsize corncob pipe in this case, 'bought at Sotheby's in 1964 for 11s 9d'.

Mr Metcalfe, garbed in the desert fatigues of an Royal Air Force wing commander, strolls to the flame. 'Ladies and gentlemen, observe the elegant gait of this combat veteran as he weaves his way through the throng,' notes the compere, Monte Cantsin, before the pipe is lit accompanied by three cheers. Each of the 80 or so competitors must smoke the Olympic pipe. 'Notice the slightly dizzy feeling of the younger competitors imbibing on the naval shag's aromatic draw,' says Mr Cantsin, a Chap devotee and the magazine's northern correspondent.

Events include the pipe-smokers relay, in which a lit pipe is passed between six teams of three along a 360-metre course, the aim being to keep the pipe smouldering, always offering a sweetly smelling pall when handed to a teammate engrossed in a fresh copy of The Daily Telegraph.

The object is not to finish first, it seems, as borne out by a lengthy standoff between competitors each politely asking the other to cross the finishing line. 'An exemplary instance of the Chap code of honour that a gentleman always comes last,' says Mr Cantsin.

The winners turn out to be the boy-girl team of Chuckles Younghusband ('That's one word, no hyphen there's a good fellow'). 'It was a well-planned team effort,' says Mr Younghusband. 'Honed with refined elegance and calling on the services of a handsome lady. A good lady always wins the eye of the judges - they cannot resist the turn of a fine ankle. There was a bit of a standoff at the line, after all, no one likes to win. We just had to do the decent thing.'

Next up is the three-legged limbo, where competitors wriggle under a lowered pole wearing an oversized pair of slacks, an event modelled on the exploits of one Captain Jack, who 'rescued a wounded comrade in the Crimean war using his own leg as a splint'. Scions of the fictional Witham Rowing Club win. Its captain is keen to show off the club badge, which features crossed oars, a Pimms glass and the words: 'Since 1999.' Witham is the world's only rowing club that bars all rowing.

Everyone is exceedingly polite. All introductions involve the shaking of hands and gazes are firmly held as acquaintances bid each other goodbye. Good manners are evident even in the nearest thing to mortal combat on show, the 'neck-tie kwondo', in which competitors bid to lasso a windsor-knotted cravat around rivals. Two chapettes are doing battle and manage to tie the neckwear around one's waist and the other's thigh.

Barry Hayter is sporting a fetching Royal Engineers uniform, as modelled by actor Michael Caine in the film Zulu. 'I feel rather dashing,' says Mr Hayter, at this, his third Chap outing. 'It's fun, pure escapism,' he says. 'I don't really buy into this rebellion stuff, all this railing against the modern world. It's an act - it's just harmless fun and dressing up.'

By mid-afternoon, a group of spivs and louche types wearing trilbies, smoking jackets and Fezzes arrive, unfurling a huge picnic rug, a wind-up gramophone and an array of 40s books and hubbly-bubblys. 'Hookahs?' chirps the adjacent picnic group.

'Isn't that a bit foreign?'

'Probably just got back from the Suez,' laughs one woman, before returning to the curling event, in which teams sweep away leaves and twigs with combs to smooth a peruke's umbrella-propelled passage to the finishing line. The event is pure slapstick. No one is sure who wins, but the gold bowler goes to Andy 'Jack' Cole, Carlos Roofe and Nicholas George Prynne Bartram. Great name, I remark to Mr Bartram.

'Erm, that's my real name,' he says.

Mr Bartram and Co are perhaps the only chaps to have made it from Up North. 'It's our first event, so we went all out for authenticity.' All have hair slicked in side partings, a la Brideshead Revisited, and all to the left. 'A gentleman always parted to the left, until they discovered the crown that is.'

Mr Temple puts us straight. 'British men part to the left because the stripes on their ties went down to the right. The opposite was the case in America.'

The northern trio are using neither Brylcreem nor modern-day gel, but Brilliantine, a nauseous substance that smells part lavender, part father's sweat, part 'sperm whale oil'. Still, their pipes smell sweet: 'Cherry shag, from Holland.'

Next is the Hendrick's steeplechase, in which women jockey the men while negotiating bothersome modern-day obstacles such as huge inflatable mobile phones, a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale ('elixir of the labouring classes') and blow-up rubber 'chavs' dressed in uncouth football tops and scarves. Then comes the hop, sip and jump event, in which entrants try to keep as much gin and tonic in their glass as possible. The winner is a BBC radio producer from Norwich, in eastern England, who was lucky not to have been disqualified after the judges took umbrage at his lack of shoes.

Then comes the umbrella hockey match, in which 'hens' play 'stags', smashing around a bowler hat with hockey sticks. The men are berated for not being gentlemanly and for playing with too much gusto.

Between events, interspersed with music from the brass band, 40s hits are tickled out of a wind-up gramophone, courtesy of Johnny Vercoutre, purveyor of all things 40s and owner of vintage vehicles ('they were made so well back then'). He used to host the invitation-only Modern Times club, a secretive venture known for getting up to all sorts of rakery.

Mr Vercoutre is not as lah-di-dah as other chaps but sports a rather bushy, well-kempt tash. What's the secret? 'Don't fiddle with it. Don't touch it at all. Fiddle with it and you end up with one like Terry-Thomas.'

The finale is the freestyle dash. Competitors bring their own vehicles, which include a hamper, in which a spiv is hoisted shoulder-high, an oaken pub table with a fetching maiden atop, a pram pushed by a man and a go-cart. At the commencement of the dash, the civilised garden party aura descends into Benny Hill-style chase chaos, as performers rush around the grounds three times.

Atters' go-cart collapses in a sea of smoke and he rounds up a willing bevy of beauties to carry him on a stretcher, until he is distracted by a scantily clad burlesque streaker, Kittie van Mew, and his bid for glory is ruined.

Lastly, there are the awards: the highly prized bronze, silver and gold cravats, awarded not for accomplishments on the field but for panache, elegance and deportment throughout the day. Silver is scooped by the monocled, cane-wielding tweed-wearing Earl of Waverley, a popular choice considering the spontaneous rendition of 'For he's the Earl of Waver-leeeeeee ... and so is his wife.'

Boaters are flung into the air and the Hendrick's hoardings, which declare, 'Another humdrum day redeemed by cucumber', are brought down.

Humdrum? Hardly. Weird? Yes. Eccentric? Rather. Quintessentially old-school English tomfoolery? We should cocoa. And polite, very polite. Toodle-pip.