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I’d like to talk to you about girls. Girls and a friend of mine. For his sake lets call him Clive.

Clive is a lovely young man, he’s cultured, intelligent, funny, well-dressed, ambitious and warm. He’s an easy going kind of Germanic geometric handsome and, okay, a tiny bit short, but he’s done a really good job working off that post-uni paunch he had for a while.

The thing that’s always puzzled me about Clive is his luck with ladies. Insofar as, he has none.

If I were a woman, not an avenue I often contemplate, he’d certainly be worth a date, but when I saw him last he told me that this month marks his current barren period’s second anniversary.

Take a second to digest that, because it’s important. This intelligent, sociable, employed, going-places guy hasn’t, in the words of Snoop Dogg, “split-a-dime” in two years.

At first it just didn’t make sense. Surely there was no single trait was so pervasive that it dissuaded all women from doing rude stuff to his genitalia? We chatted for while. Expounded his varying idiosyncrasies and decided eventually, it was his “bonkersness” that sent the women a’scattering.

I should explain: Clive, can, on occasion, go a bit bonkers. He’s an intensely emotional kind of chap, (which I always thought girls thought was a positive) and after a few drams he has been known to get a tad sweary, and ranty, and runny-away-y — but only very occasionally. And even when he does, it’s only in a vaguely affected kind of this-is-sort-of-a-joke kind of way.

The other thing about him is — he’s not sensible. Every time I see him he comes weilding a bagful of new hilarious annecodotes, which, though undoubtedly engaging pub-chat fodder, are not the larks of “boyfriend material”.

Continuing our disassembly of his misfortune with ladies we decided that it was probably something to do with the economy.

There were some unlikely paralells. He broke up with his first serious girlfriend just as news of the full severity of the American sub-prime crisis hit. His luck with women seemed to decline steadily as the state of the economy did.

Clive, we reasoned, was a risky investment, not the kind of asset you want to be dumping your affections into at a time of such uncertainty.

By the time the banks were being nationalised Clive’s love life was wilting faster than an 80-year-old’s morning glory in a cold bedroom (not that any 80-year-old’s bedroom should be cold these days — are the Tories cutting the winter tax allowance? They’re probably taxing 80-year-old’s erections too, the perverted, joyless, Tory bastards).

Could it be that in times of financial turmoil girls pick their mate on how safe an investment they are? Pre-recession I’d have baulked at such talk.

“He’s just saying that because he can’t talk to girls.” I’d have no doubt chuntered before throwing another fiver on the fire — thems were the days.

But now, in these Times Of Austerity women do seem less keen on “taking a punt on a diamond in the rough like me”… He didn’t actually call himself that, but he is one. Well actually, more like a diamond under the out-of-date creme-fraiche behind the fizzy tzatziki from last week’s BBQ.

He’s had a long-standing crush on a girl he’s known since he was a kid and I met her for the first time a month ago. To say that he could do better would be an substantial understatement. She was about as sexy as athletes foot, about as engaging as a bin liner — basically she was pretty dull. It made me sad that he thought this cold, custard’s skin of a girl was out of his league because in reality, she is a fair few below.

It really over-waters my bansai when women choose such materialistic reasons to pick a partner. And okay, our evidence is thin, but I have another exhibit.

Another friend, lets call him Bernard. He’s a man of considerably less charm than Clive, no better looking, markedly less engaging and about as much fun as being made to walk around with your shoes on the wrong feet. Frankly, I don’t know why we’re friends. He is however, stinking rich. And he knows how to show it.

He dresses like a toff. He talks like a toff. He walks like a toff. If his poo were to suddenly become sentient, it too, I’m sure, would have that same effortless air of innate, hateful, superiority that pervades every aspect of his life.

Pre-recession women found him about as attractive as, well, a disgusting, ugly, rude toff, which is in fact, exactly what he is. Post recession women however, can’t get enough of him.

Has he upped his game? Has he become less of twat? No! If anything he’s become more of one. And yet, they fall at his feet, like dizzy little schoolgirls, swooning over the things he says he can buy, and places he reckons he’ll go this summer.

Now this is all purely observational. And certainly not a generalisation I would ever stretch to the majority of women. All I am asking is, do women, and not just the heinously materialistic, lap dog toting genus, think about a man’s fiscal standing when considering them as a partner. Moreover, is that sentiment strengthened during times of economic instablilty, like what we’z are in in this bit of time right now?

Because Clive is seriously a catch. And Bernard really isn’t.