Often when I’ve been out with friends they say on the way home ‘Oh she really fancied you’ he opines

“Often when I’ve been out with friends, they say on the way home, ‘Oh, she really fancied you,’” he opines. “Why don’t they tell me at the time? I always assume women are just being friendly – I don’t like to read too much into them chatting and smiling, in case I make a fool of myself.”In the Martini survey, 36 per cent of respondents believed women to be better flirts than men, but there are still some enthusiastic male flirts out there “I’m not sure I like the term ‘flirting’,” says Martin, 29. “But if you mean things like smiling and making eye contact, and being friendly, then yes, of course. Life’s too short to be a miserable bastard, and if you can spread a little happiness along the way, why not? I flirt like mad, and I’ve never had my face slapped.”And there are still female flirters about to meet him half-way “It is enormous fun,” says Anna, 31. “So few people pay compliments that when I say something like ‘Nice haircut, you look really handsome’ you can practically see someone blossom and that gives me a thrill It’s also to do with banter, which is my middle name. It’s just an exaggerated form of being charming.”However, she concedes there are rules.

“I never flirt if there are just two of us – it all takes on too much significance But I flirt in public, at parties, at work. My flirting is all fairly harmless in that it’s not coarse – I would never be obviously sexual, that is just naff. The secret of good flirting is to make the other person shine, not scare them to death.”And, adds Fox, even the timid and conformist Americans are fighting the “culture of pervasive anxiety”. “Now you can find flirting classes all over the place in the States,” she says “And people are flocking to them.”. The clique that runs the Royal Opera House has had it, and about time, too.

The process will be agonising and it will end in humiliation for the “self-perpetuating oligarchy” that has been running Covent Garden, spending tens of millions of taxpayers’ money to do so. The old establishment in the arts is about to surrender to Labour. Proof of this came in the following exchange last Thursday at the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. The chairman was Gerald Kaufman MP, conducting business in the jocular manner of the master of ceremonies at a Victorian music hall.