Ruth Walker

THEY say everyone has a book inside them, so I'm considering penning mine. It'll be like a Haynes manual for men, about women, and it'll be subtitled We're a Lot Less Complicated Than a Multi-valve Twin-spark Ignition Engine. Or something.

Actor James Nesbitt has spoken this week of his regret over the affairs and drinking that rocked his marriage. But, for most men, the mistakes they make are rather more elementary.

So Chapter One will begin with the basics: hygiene. I was recently chatted up by a well-dressed, high-powered (he said) gentleman who seemed charming and eloquent. Unfortunately I didn't catch a thing he said because I was forced to recoil every time he opened his mouth. Whatever small woodland creature he'd devoured for lunch was still festering halfway down his gullet, causing the kind of halitosis only Shrek could find attractive. Gents, brush your teeth, floss occasionally. It's not rocket science.

Next on the agenda would be clothing, and slogan T-shirts deserve a special mention, especially the kind of unsavoury item spotted stretched across an ample abdomen in a Prestonpans chipper at the weekend (I know, it serves me right), which featured a large '69' followed by the words: 'Wanted: A girl who's good with numbers'. Any woman who thinks that is either big or clever deserves whatever single-figure IQ man she gets.

Getting the girl is, of course, only half the job done – now they've got to keep her interested. So, when she has spent hours getting ready, choosing her outfit with care, plucking, tweezing and waxing to within an inch of her life, a mumbled "You look fine, the taxi's waiting" doesn't quite cut it.

And don't be like one hapless chap who, on the first evening of living with his girlfriend, popped his roast-dinner-for-one in the microwave before piping up cheerily: "What are you having for tea, dear?"

Another potential blow-up on the relationships minefield is the area of gifts. So spare a thought for the dearly beloved of a friend, who bought her a fancy new iron one year. By the time she was finally speaking to him again, he realised he'd boobed and vowed to do better the following year. Surely she'd be bowled over by the new shower curtain carefully wrapped up under the Christmas tree? I'll make things simple: if it's useful, it's a duff present.

Better to be like the former colleague who went shopping for his wife's birthday present in his lunch hour. Eagerly crowding around his expensive-looking shopping bags, we gasped as he revealed the most magnificent pair of shoes we'd ever seen: ludicrously high, gloriously impractical… he even got her size right. Which just goes to prove what we suspected all along. He must be gay.