University researchers reckon romantic comedies raise unrealistic expectations of relationships, but surely nobody is that naïve.

ROMANTIC comedies ruin your life. Well, that’s university researchers say. A team at Heriot-Watt University watched 40 films and questioned lots of people before deciding that romantic comedies set up unrealistic expectations about romance.

Precisely. That’s what they’re for.

The university researchers seem pretty dim not to have grasped that.

All that sitting round in the dark watching too many movies, no doubt.

There are lots more uncomfortable research projects.

Of course films are unrealistic. Do wizards live in cupboards under stairs? Do secret agents regularly hang by one hand from wing tips? Do menopausal women regularly get whole villages dancing and singing along jetties to rubbish 80s songs?

And wouldn’t it be terrifying if they did?

That’s why we watch films – for something escapist and daft. They are not meant to be lessons in life.

And I don’t think, really, that most of us are naïve enough to think so.

Long before films were invented there have always been romantics.

There were romantic novels. Before that there were fairy tales, sagas and epic poems. So men dreamed of slaying dragons and winning battles.

And women dreamed of finding the perfect soulmate, our very own Prince Charming or Mr Darcy.

And I bet even in the poorly-educated, superstition-ridden, fairy tale world of history not many girls actually started husband-hunting by kissing a frog.

When we sit in a cinema with our overpriced popcorn we settle down to suspend belief. Yes, maybe a bit of us would like to think that the world could really be like that. But we know really that when our hero and heroine start their happy ever after life together, that the really challenging bit is only just beginning.

We’d like life to be like a fairy tale.

We know it’s not. And yes, deep down, we can tell the difference.

Maybe the researchers should get out more.

And if they want some really confusing entertainment to worry about, maybe they should start on pantomime...

I KNOW those of us lucky – or determined enough – to pay off our mortgages should feel sorry for those coming behind who can’t get on the property ladder. And I do. I do. But I still can’t help a little sigh.

Just after we took on our last mortgage, interest rates soared to a whopping 15 per cent. Our payments nearly doubled in six months and we struggled for every penny.

Now when we’re at the stage when we’d like equally high interest on our very modest savings, rates have plummeted right down to a miserly two or three per cent .

Right place. Wrong time. Not fair. Typical.

JAMIE Oliver is cleaning up his act. TV bosses are insisting that in his next series, his lively language will have to be toned down.

Brilliant. Could they do the same with Gordon Ramsay please?

Effing and blinding on television has long since lost its ability to shock. It has become a sort of verbal litter and very boring. It will be so nice – yawn – not to have to listen to it any more.

MORE than 50 years ago Welsh politician Aneurin Bevin thundered about the poverty of aspiration that was the real force in preventing the lowest classes from success.

A new study by the Social Exclusion Task Force says that in many former industrial areas of the North, white working class boys leave school early and do badly because they have no ambition to achieve their potential. Haven’t got very far in 50 years, have we?

Chelsy's got it right

PRINCE Harry’s party-loving blonde girlfriend Chelsy Davy comes from a family so rich, she need never work.

Like Prince William’s girlfriend, Kate Middleton, she could, quite easily take a little part-time job to fill the time until she becomes a princess.

But no. After her degree in Economics at Cape Town university, she has spent the last 18 months doing a postgraduate law degree at Leeds.

Rumours had it that she was unhappy in the chilly North and wanted to go home. But she was determined not to give up her course.

And now she’s spending a couple of weeks on work experience with top London law firms – braving not just the photocopying and the coffee machine, but a barrage of photographers as she goes back and forth to the office.

Chelsy Davy knows how to party. She also knows how to work. Sounds a pretty good combination really.

■ Sharon Griffiths’ first novel is now a contender for a top book prize. The Accidental Time Traveller (Avon £6.99) has been longlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award, alongside such bestsellers as Sophie Kinsella, Victoria Hislop and Ceceila Ahern. The shortlist is announced in January and the winner in February.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,

SHARON Shoesmith, the head of Haringey Children’s Services might have been dismissed without a pay-off, but she still has a pension pot worth over £1m, so will not be struggling for money.

I understand her successor will be paid even more. How can council officials be paid more than the Prime Minister?

Eleanor Rogers, Darlington.

Dear Sharon,

I REMEMBER making Christmas decorations out of sticky paper. My sisters and I would make huge chains of them for every room, even the bathroom.

They kept us busy and out of the way while Mum did all the preparations for Christmas.

One year we made so many we decorated our grandma’s house as well.

Over Christmas they would gradually come unstuck and fall apart. That was part of the fun too and we enjoyed ripping them all down and putting them on the fire on Twelfth Night.

Margaret Pearson, Darlington.

We love bad wrapping

WHY are most men such rubbish at packing presents?

And why do we love them for it? At some point on Christmas Eve, Senior Son will come along with a present for his girlfriend, a chaotic pile of wrapping paper, sticky tape, labels and scissors and shove it all into my arms and plead with me to wrap it for him.

Actually, I know, she would prefer it badly wrapped by him. Husband used to bribe secretaries to do his presentwrapping for him. But there is always a certain charm in the badly wrapped, bumpy parcel, with the hacked paper and the twisted sticky tape. And also, let’s face it, ho ho, it’s always good to know that they suffered.

Now Firebox – retailer of gizmos and gadgets to the nation – has launched Crapwrap. Instead of paying to have your purchases exquisitely wrapped, you can get them done by the guys who normally drive the forklift trucks.

Wrapping paper, brown parcel tape, lumps, bumps and gaps all included.

Brilliant. It will, of course, add that personal touch.

It is glorious and daft and they have been overwhelmed by orders. But if so many people are prepared to fork out £4 to get their presents looking as though they have been wrapped by a cack-handed drunk in the dark, then maybe times are not quite as hard as we thought.