Whats happened to the Latin lover?
While Britain topped this week’s poll for casual sex, Italy ranked a surprisingly monastic 11th. So where does that leave the reputation of the Latin lothario? Many years ago, in Venice, I met a girl. Actually no, that’s not true. I met two girls. And I was with two friends. There was a degree of jostling. We didn’t talk about it, we British men. We just circled, nonchalantly, and squired them to galleries for the best part of a week. We plied them with cheap Italian wine and told amusing tales. They laughed, threw back their long hair, touched us intimately on the forearms, and then bogged off, really quite abruptly, with a pair of 3ft tall, purring, hirsute dwarfs who roared up on a Vespa while we were chastely admiring some sort of fountain. That was that. Never saw them again. Never heard a peep. That’s how long it takes an Italian to steal your woman. Thirty seconds. I know. I’ve seen. And yet, in New Scientist, researchers from Bradley University, Illinois, suggest that, of all m
