YES You know, there was a time when I believed all that blarney about females being genetically prone to gossiping. Having been to a girls' school, followed by a women's college, I knew that we spent time talking about each other. Well, we had to talk about something. The boys who occasionally blundered across the threshold of those institutions were taciturn oafs, adjusting themselves slowly to the pace of their hormones.
Then I went into journalism. The males were still oafs, of course, but they'd discovered language somewhere along the line and didn't hesitate to use it. In this, they were merely continuing a tradition which encompasses Plato (you thought they gathered to discuss philosophy?), town-criers, the founders of that original gossipy periodical, The Tatler and Walter Winchell. Who has the highest-paid gossip column on a British newspaper? Nigel Dempster. Who peers into the lives of the rich and famous? Robin Leach. Who wrote the most sensational tell-all royal book of the lot? Andrew Morton.
And speaking of Diana, isn't it significant that no woman is a member of the British tabloid rat-pack? Naturally, few women would be witless enough to stand around for hours waiting for another human being to leap into a car and drive away. But men do it all the time. It's called being a royal correspondent. And have you ever heard of a female paparazzo? Funnily enough, neither have I.
So I've pondered this for a long time - most particularly after I've had a chat with that devil on the other side and he's told me about some scandal which has been happening under my nose while I've been wandering around in a 'Hello trees! Hello sky!' kind of way - and I've realised that it's to do with semantics. Which is always the case, of course, when one sex wants to squelch the other.
Thus, women tell malicious tales while men report The Truth As it Must Be Told. One female's snippet of gossip is another man's vital item of news. And don't think it's confined to journalism. How do you imagine that MI5 or the CIA operate? Or politicians, especially the diary-keeping variety? Or businessmen sidling up to a takeover? They all thrive on gossip but because they're invariably men, they call it information-gathering or spin-doctoring or some such high-falutin' nonsense.
In any case, a combination of Catholic guilt, short-sightedness and a horror of being discussed myself has made me a hopeless gossip. Here's a true story. Some years ago, several months after I first joined this paper, I went to the office party, which was held in a private room. We were a small group but there was a gentleman pottering around whom I didn't recognise. Eventually, towards the end of the evening, I asked a colleague who the stranger was. Once he'd stopped laughing, he managed to gasp out his reply: 'That, my dear, is your editor-in-chief.' NO Did you know that when Alex the Greek slept with Rob's sister it only lasted 90 seconds? Well, nor did I, until one evening in the boozer when the information - rather like Alex - just slipped out. I suppose such revelations, as well as the delight we took in discussing it, could be construed as gossip. I like to hear scandalous information about my friends and - like all real gossips - I rather enjoy being the subject of it too. Oscar Wilde was right when he said the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Where Oscar was wrong was that, in reality, the only thing worse than being talked about is waking up with a woman with whom you have have had sex that lasted only one and a half minutes, but he wouldn't have known anything about that.
So, yes, men gossip. But the fact men gossip is not at issue here. The question is are we worse gossips than women, and the answer must be an unequivocal no.