OUTSIDE IT IS California, 2004. But inside the chintzy ballroom of the Ayres Hotel it may as well be Stepford, Connecticut, with the clock wound back 50 years.

I am here on a Tuesday evening, sitting on an upholstered royal-crested chair surrounded by perhaps 200 couples. Most are approaching middle age; some have young children on their laps. The men are shuffling uncomfortably, scared that slightest hint of a smirk could result in a sharp blow to the back of the head. The women are either nodding their heads studiously or looking as though they want to start lobbing the furniture in the direction of the stage.

“Have you noticed,” asks the tiny, immaculately coiffured blonde under the spotlight, “that the guys in here are scared — and the women can’t decide if they’re mad at me or not.” A smile of Hollywood wattage briefly dazzles the audience. The men, more worried about the women being furious with them, chuckle politely. The females continue to stare at the 5ft 3in creature in front of them as if she had just emerged from a smoking crater somewhere in the Mojave desert.

The event is a relationship counselling session called Dr Laura’s Couples Encounter. It feels more like a close encounter with an alien whose only knowledge of planet Earth comes from watching repeats of The Waltons. We are in Laguna Hills, a suburban town in ultra-conservative Orange County, a safe 100 miles southeast of the liberal theme park that is Los Angeles. The town, like so many others in the desert sprawl of Southern California, is characterless and pristine, as though it arrived that day in a cardboard box from Amazon.com.

The blonde is Laura Schlessinger — Dr Laura to her fans — America’s most controversial sex and relationship guru. Accused of “hate speech” by gay rights activists (she has described gays and lesbians as “a biological faux pas”) and of trying to reverse the women’s rights movement by feminists, she has found a new popularity under the Bush Administration, with its emphasis on family and heterosexual marriage. Her fame is even expanding overseas — her latest book, the fabulously titled The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, will be out in the UK in August.

All this is a quite an achievement. “To challenge feminism in America is to disqualify yourself as a moral contender,” Martin Amis wrote in 1984. “It is the equivalent of espousing a return to slavery.” Dr Laura does not merely challenge feminism; she calls it a disease, and hopes to bring about a second sexual revolution in America which will put women back in the home, where they will have sex with their husbands and look after the kids.

She is particularly enraged by what she calls the “frump syndrome”, the symptoms of which involve women going to bed in — gasp! — flannel pyjamas or big T-shirts, and failing to sexually excite their husbands. For many men, it all sounds too good to be true.

As much as liberal America wants to dismiss Dr Laura as just another right-wing talk radio crank, her influence is hard to ignore. The 57-year-old divorcée now has six New York Times bestsellers to her name (titles include The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life, Don’t Have Them If You Won’t Raise Them, Ten Stupid Things Couples Do To Mess Up Their Relationships and Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives) and a radio show which went national a decade ago and is now broadcast on 300 stations to 12 million people.

Dr Laura’s success — her career began after she called a Los Angeles radio show and impressed the host with her candour — has brought her rock-concert-sized book-signing crowds, including an event last week in Salt Lake City attended by several thousand converts. Every so often, however, she has to cancel speaking engagements because of death threats. The upside has been immense wealth; she proudly tells the people of Laguna Hills that she recently bought a Porsche because “it looked cute”.

It would be a mistake to assume that the title of Dr Laura’s latest book contains even a trace of irony; there is none. The preface of Proper Care, for example, warns female readers that Dr Laura will remind them “to take proper care of their husbands” to “ensure themselves the happiness and satisfaction they yearn for in marriage”. Titles of chapters include A Man Should Be Respected in His Own Home, You’re a Nag!, Guy Time and, of course, What’s Sex? To Dr Laura, and the millions who listen to her show and buy her books, the past 30 years have been a disastrous experiment with gender roles and liberal indulgence. She appears to tut, for example, at the concept of marital rape: “Did sometimes you get involved with him sexually and you weren’t really interested, but he lit your fire and you got into it?” she once asked a caller. “Well then, you don’t have to feel like it, do you? I think women underestimate how emotionally important it is for men to feel accepted.” She conceeds that a few men are scoundrels and must be dumped; but most, she maintains, are “nice” and worth keeping with sex.

Back at the Ayres Hotel, Dr Laura elaborates. “For a man,” she tells her rapt audience, “being accepted physically by his wife is how he feels love.” In Dr Laura’s world, men are incapable of any other form of communication, unless they are “ordering something or fixing something”. Her eyes fix on a woman in the audience. “I don’t care if you’re not in the mood!” she shrieks. “Imagine how domineering and cruel it is to deny him that! There are hundreds and thousands of women who don’t realise they’re on a countdown. When the kids turn 18, he’s GONE — and it’s because he’s tired of being marginalised and hurt.” She pauses, allowing the room to feel the pain of all those poor, sexually deprived husbands.

And why should women give their men what they supposedly want? Because that is the only way to receive love, attention and, most importantly, chivalrous household chores, such as mowing the lawn.

As Dr Laura makes this point, however, the thought occurs to me that even as a red-blooded male I would not want to have sex with an unwilling wife who was doing it only because she wanted me to repaint the garden shed at the weekend. Is that what marital love is all about? In fact, I conclude, I would count myself extremely unlucky if I found myself married to a woman who even entertained the idea of having unwanted, lacklustre sex simply to ensure the completion of a menial task.

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