I'm fairly sure that Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, would rather flambé his eyelids in methylated spirit than be married to me. But just supposing that he was, he would be wearing a thick ear right now. Never mind, for a minute, the “has Nick ‘Cleggs-akimbo' slept with 30 women” sideshow and consider the far worse faux pas that he committed.

Asked in a GQ interview by Piers Morgan “Would you ever be unfaithful to your wife?”, he replied: “I certainly hope not.” No, no, no, no, no, Nick. It's like this, see. One hopes that one won't get flattened by a bus on the way to work in the morning; one hopes that a random pigeon won't crap on one's head; one hopes that one's private parts won't be ravaged by necrotising fasciitis. These are things that we are powerless to control. Being faithful to your wife, on the other hand, is not. All you have to do when faced with another woman offering it on a plate is say: “No thanks, pet. Put them away.” Et voilà! - no uncertainty whatsoever.

Nick Clegg appears to be a nice man, and I'm sure that he has never had the slightest intention of cheating on his wife. But in one sentence he has, sadly, exposed himself as being a bit gormless at keeping women sweet.

It isn't so difficult: what all wives would want to hear in such an instance would be a nice, clear, robust denial. “Of course I'll never be unfaithful to my wife! Haven't you seen how gorgeous she is?” would have been a good response. Even a cheesy plagiarism of Paul Newman's line - “Why go out for a burger when you have steak at home?” - would have done.

Yet part of me grudgingly admires our Nick for being so blokeishly honest. Most men, I think, genuinely want to be faithful but, faced with temptation, couldn't put their hand on their hearts and say that they would definitely resist it. Look, it's not their fault, it's the testosterone.

A swift vox pop of ten of my male friends in long-term relationships reveals that 90 per cent of them would enthusiastically get their (C)leg(g) over if they could be guaranteed to get away with it - but would I mind not telling their partners that that was the answer they gave? (Actually, it may chasten them to know that most of the women were not exactly averse to the idea either.) Only one man, who has been through two messy divorces caused by his infidelity, said: “I would sooner put my d*** in a vice than go through all that again.”

In today's climate you have to feel a degree of sympathy for the male politician who - as Clegg was - is asked the question: “How many women have you slept with?” What's the right answer to give? Politicians are expected to be all things to all men, so do you risk outraging the unpromiscuous and the Daily Mail by claiming a high number or alienate the boss-shagger swath of the electorate with a pitifully low one and look like a frigid square? Or do you say “Sod off and mind your own business”, as I strongly suspect Gordon Brown and David Cameron would have done?

As it was, Clegg's actual answer of “no more than 30” probably melded the worst of all worlds. There are those (me) who suspect that he might have exaggerated this bedpost-notching to impress, or possibly even compete with, Piers Morgan, and to highlight his youthful virility in contrast to that of Menzies Campbell. There are others who think that he was playing it down and is, thus, a bit of a lothario (never ideal for a politician). And there are those who think that his reply was deliciously, obfuscatingly Lib-Demish. For a man who met his wife at the age of 24, he would have to, I reckon, have been a bit of a swordsman at university to clock up such a tally, though of course there are plenty who do. And Clegg is quite handsome, in a Boden catalogue sort of way. Anyway, by Lib-Dem standards, this is a pretty tame sexual confession - as I'm sure Mark Oaten would agree.

For the record, the British Sexual Fantasy Research Project of 2007 (what do you mean, you don't have a copy?) found that a typical heterosexual male has an average of 15.64 different women in his lifetime, which means that Nick is veritably humping the trend. But guess what? Another study carried out in America in 2005 found that while women reported having an average of 8.6 sexual partners in their lifetime, men claimed to have had a stonking 31.9. “The men in this survey were producing egregiously elevated responses,” said the professor who conducted the study. “Men are twice as likely to use rough approximation to answer the question. And rough approximation is a strategy known to produce overestimation.” Who would have thought it?

Oh, but so what if Clegg has gilded the lily a shade? At least he has started a national debate concerning the point at which one becomes a slut (the consensus among my female friends is that this occurs when the number passes 40, while among my male friends the figure is 60). Men who are still in single figures are feeling anxious that the leader of a fairly dull political party might have left them standing in the shagging stakes. Women who once might have lopped a few off their real tally in fear of seeming easy are suddenly feeling positively chaste.

By contrast, in pubs around Britain furious totting up is going on, with men asking each other such things as: “Does it count if I got to second base?” In future, I believe that passing the 30 mark will come to be known among young men as “achieving one's Clegg”. And, let's face it, that might make more of an imprint on history than anything he does with the Liberal Democrats.

A lot of cava, and a little bit of mambo
Today is Ladies' Day at Aintree racecourse and one male newspaper columnist is already bridling at the prospect of “the frightening sight of Scouse girls in their party best. Culture it ain't”.

Based on my own experience of this event, it will indeed involve bottles of cava being pulled out of handbags at 11am and furtively swigged on the local train. Gobsmackingly beautiful girls in minuscule (and extremely expensive) outfits will brave icy winds and hail - but refuse to wear a coat lest it detract from their new frocks. And when the racing is finished and everyone floods back into town, the night will end with women dancing round their now-flattened hats and singing Mambo No 5 on the karaoke machine. Is it just me, or is that not infinitely more life-affirming than hanging out with the stuffed shirts at Ascot?

Sexism barred
Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House of Commons, has introduced new legislation that will make it illegal for punters to make sexist remarks to barmaids. Meanwhile, the construction company Wimpey has banned its builders from wolf-whistling at women because it puts off house-hunters. In my late teens I worked for a couple of years behind a bar in Lancashire deflecting such comic jewels as “Got any big jugs, love?” and once, when wearing an ill-advised, tight white jumpsuit: “The last time I saw a backside like that, it had a harpoon in it.” It was often tiresome, occasionally funny, but rarely upsetting. Coming up with a suitably cutting retort kept the brain active and didn't half help to pass the time. For what it's worth, I reckon that Harman has got about as much chance of eliminating sexism as John Prescott has of winning Rear of the Year.

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