Love is in the ear

THE FRIDAY THING: Poppy Smart (a super name) is the young woman who called police after feeling insulted and humiliated because builders on her route to work wolf-whistled at her.

Never having been a girl, thank heavens, the only time I was whistled at was by a rotund and red-faced referee in charge of one of the Chronicle’s football matches, many years ago.

The highlight of those games was not a whistle from the ref but the fact that our goalkeeper kept a bottle of something behind the goal posts and you could stop for a few minutes to tie a boot lace and take “refreshment”.

Thanks to an anthropologist from Vienna, men don’t need to whistle at women. Markus Kippensteiner (another brilliant name) says women don’t need the nuisance of being whistled at... because they have appealing voices.

According to the prof, men can “hear” a pretty face because attractive women have attractive voices.

So love is in the ear; men can judge how attractive a woman is by how she sounds.

Professor Kippensteiner photographed 42 women before measuring their body symmetry (a tough job, but someone, etc). I bet there was a queue.

Research suggests women pay close attention to men’s voices too. And yes, I reckon many women are laughing right now because it’s a while since they actually let a man speak.

I can’t somehow see Poppy holding many conversations with mere men, especially men who have the temerity to whistle.



The good news is that the election is nearly with us (which means, nearly over).

Soon there will be an end to those endless (sometimes mindless) leaders’ get-togethers to call one another names.

Nick Clegg has been having a good election, though whether it will do him any good on election day, no one knows. He is one of the bookies’ favourites to lose big.

And how about this little gem from the antics of the Labour election team who have been behaving like kids finally leaving school?

Labour campaign staff have drawn up a league table about who turns out to be the best at “crotch postures”. Labour’s campaign chiefs stand under the TVs in their office and compete to make the most alpha male comments about the news.

“There is competitive crotch-thrusting” confides an insider. No wonder we admire and respect them all...