Why are straight men such poofs? A male friend staying last weekend (heterosexual) betrayed complete incompetence at stoking and regulating a log-burning stove, yet could hold forth thoughtfully on the right age for a man to quit messed-up hair and the use of gel.

The average thirtysomething straight bloke can talk for hours about football these days, but hardly change a light bulb. He feels no male shame at this. Your macho, hetero hunk just sits there, legs apart and hair artfully quiffed, sipping a New World red, glancing at his own reflection in the window, and boasting of his inability to use a simple adjustable spanner.

He buys pre-faded, pre-paint-spattered, “distressed” denim and wears lumberjack-style boots that have hardly seen a tree, let alone a chainsaw. He smiles shyly, his stubble carefully calibrated, looking helpless, hapless and secretly vulnerable — and barely able to distinguish between one end of a screwdriver and the other.

Modern gays have no time for pouting around like this. We climb ladders. We fix tiles. We are handy around the house, able to rig a tent, and happy to converse intelligently on subjects as diverse as plastering, mousetraps and central heating boilers.

So what goes wrong with our straight counterparts? One of the problems that many modern heteros face is that they have had too few male influences in their lives, typically being maintained by their mothers until they move in with a girlfriend or fiancée. While gay men tend to sally forth early into the world, joining gyms, rambling groups, athletic clubs or the Sea Cadets, their heterosexual counterparts are preening themselves on sofas, watching TV, reading lifestyle magazines, contemplating the purchase of a new pair of trainers, or text-messaging their girlfriends. It’s horribly Italian. No wonder they like girls, poor things: they are like girls.

• Despair borders on panic in the Stop Gordon Brown camp. Is it too late? Will the economic downturn never come? Is there nobody with the guts to throw themselves between the Labour Party and the cliff’s edge? This may be last-minute but I have a plan. Here is the scenario. John Reid invites the Chancellor to an informal supper, à deux, in an intimate corner of a very happening Islington restaurant. There are no witnesses. Reid has a proposal to make.

  “Look, Gordon, we’ve got a pretty touch-and-go general election coming down the track. It’ll be knife-edge and hard-fought but with my national security brief and years of practice on the Today programme I believe I’m the man with the battlefield skills to take us through the rough-and-tumble — and the party and the media think so too. You alone, however, have the knowhow to steer the ship. And it’s your turn. I recognise that.

  “So here’s the deal. I lead Labour into the election and, after we win, become Prime Minister. But only for a year or two. And from the start I’ll leave the management of the economy to you. As soon as we judge the moment right, I’ll hand over to you. Honestly I will — cross my heart. Let’s drink to that, Gordon. Cheers!” Well, he fell for it last time . . .

• In Received Pronunciation, the long “a” will within 50 years be dead. I have spotted the beginnings of its demise.

  By long “a” I mean the soft, Home Counties and London “ah” as voiced in bath, afternoon or fast. In the North of England, as in North America, Australia and New Zealand, they use the shorter harder “a” that we all use in (for instance) plank, angry or crass. In the North they always have. What is changing is that those whose accents are otherwise southern (who would, for instance, describe good fortune as “ luck” rather than “look”, and cowpats as “muck” rather than “mook”) are beginning to abandon the long “a” while keeping their southern accents otherwise intact.

  In the revised southern pronunciation one would say “I stepped in some muck this aff-ternoon”. Broadcasters and weather forecasters with otherwise entirely southern accents are now regularly using the short “a” for “class” in “working-class”. I suspect that subliminally this is considered regional chic or proletarian cool.

  Mark my words, under attack from across the Atlantic and north of the Watford Gap, our southern “ah” is approaching its lasst gassp, and people in Newcass-tle are laffing at us poor basstards, stuck in the passt. Flags at haff-masst, please.

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