True romantics read no further, for the worst is officially true: money can buy you love — if you invest wisely.

Let us be clear about this: diamonds remain a girl’s best friend, and they must have their place in every courtship. But what really cements a relationship, according to scientists at University College London, are extravagant but intrinsically worthless gifts — gestures that show not only a willingness to invest financially, but emotionally too.

Thus dinners in expensive restaurants, where the only valuables a girl might take home are fond memories of heart-to-hearts over the crème brulée, score highly on the university team’s Lovedaq. A bag of chips on the night bus might well lead to one’s love-stock dipping considerably — but the thing most likely to cause a fatal crash, say the scientists, would be a potentially insulting material gesture, such as an overpriced handbag or an unwanted and wildly expensive pair of shoes. The gift must be more abstract, less obvious, an expensive conceit, that proves the very opposite of conceit.

If, therefore, it has been scientifically proven that dinner for two at the Ivy restaurant is the evolutionary equivalent of slaying a prize mammoth and laying it at your beloved’s cave door, it follows that celebrities must be the most successfully evolved exponents of the species. They are the great providers of the overpriced inanity, and so is it any wonder that they apparently have a long queue of potential mates? It is not the fame, nor the money, but the ridiculous way in which the money is spent that makes them so devilishly attractive.