Well, it’s official: male and female brains are definitely, definitely, absolutely wired differently.

Absolutely. That’s the reason we don’t understand each other. That’s the reason one sex can park well and one can talk well, and neither can do both – certainly not at the same time. That’s the reason men are the hunter-gatherers and women are the stay-at-home communicators. Women are absolutely from Brain Venus, and men are totally from Brain Mars. It’s official.

I know, it’s all ridiculous. Nobody knows why, but ‘researchers’ will keep conducting these ‘investigations’ into whether or not male and female brains are wired differently, or whether men prefer the sight of breasts more than women, or whether if the Daily Mail stops printing these vacuous studies the scientists will stop conducting them.

OK, I made that last one up: it’s obvious they will never stop printing them.

I don’t think it’s a terrible stretch to think that the brains of men may be slightly different to the brains of women. It’s entirely plausible and probable that certain aspects of our brains may look a little different to one another’s. I mean, our bodies looked ever so slightly different last time I checked. Why shouldn’t our brains?

Scientists involved in this latest study said that the biggest surprise for them was how much their findings supported old stereotypes, with men's brains apparently wired better for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking.

Women are ‘hardwired’ to listen more carefully because we’re more emotionally involved. However, after presenting these finding, the scientists often say, ‘Of course, there will always be exceptions’. You will always find a woman who has acute perception and co-ordination skills. There will always be some guy who listens wonderfully and has brilliant social skills and multi-tasks superbly. He is also, no doubt, already married. There will always be exceptions. But when it comes to the great man-woman divide, I’ve found these exceptions to be rather common. Rather less like exceptions and more like a large proportion of each sex has strong traits commonly attributed to the other.

So what if men and women’s brains may be wired slightly differently? There may be predispositions for certain skills and these vary greatly between individuals and are dependent (I’m sure) on various external factors. Just because my gran and my great-gran tried to throw themselves off bridges (they didn’t, but suppose they did) does that mean I’m gonna end up on The Folly Bridge, declaring, ‘Goodbye Cruel World!’ before belly-flopping into the Isis? No. Well, unless I have to endure reading too many more reports of this pointless kind of research.