I didn't believe it. Why? I didn't believe it because I have all these qualities in abundance. Women should find me irresistible. They should be throwing themselves at my feet. They don't!

Other things are far more important than the characteristics listed. Women are attracted to exciting men - men who are fun to be with. I think men who foster a feel good factor by being appreciative, complimentary, thoughtful and generous are going to be more successful with women than loyal, affectionate types like me. Cleanliness is high on the list of women's priorities. Not many ladies would marry a man in the knowledge that he changes his underwear once every three months. My three brothers got noticeably cleaner after they had married. Finally the single most attractive quality in a man is that he shows interest. One of the most alluring attributes of a member of the opposite sex is that they find you desirable.

If I test the results of the Daily Telegraph survey against my experience I find it wanting. If you are grubby, uncomplimentary, boring and diffident you have very little chance of attracting a woman. I know!

One Christmas I heard a Bishop of the Church of England questioning the accuracy of the advent stories in Luke's gospel. He considered they had some value because they reflected what the writer thought about Jesus but had no historical validity. Luke and Matthew were writing sixty or seventy years after Jesus' birth. By that time the details of his birth would have been forgotten and Jesus' biographers were forced to invent a few stories.

This sounds reasonable but does it pass the test of experience. People can have very long memories of incidents that happened many years ago. I was out walking last week and bumped into the parents of a girl I taught in the 1970's. We began to talk about holidays abroad. "Of course," said the father, "You're not much in favour of foreign holidays. Our daughter used to come home and say, 'Mr Reed can't understand why you holiday abroad when there is so much to see in your own country.'"

"Did I say that?"

"Yes," said the father, " and furthermore you said, 'I can just imagine your father in one of those Spanish resorts going from bar to bar.'"

"I wouldn't say a thing like that."

"You would and did!" he retorted.

He was right. Thirty-five years on that father remembered what he still considered a slur on his character. There are things we do not forget. A women NEVER forgets the events surrounding the birth of her first child. Over 60 years ago my mother had a terrible time giving birth to me because I had a big head. My uncle told me he could recall my birth being solemnly announce by my grandfather in the Otley manse, "Betty has given birth to a son." My uncle was there. I was born during a bitter winter and it was weeks before I was taken out in my pram. A little hunchbacked man, David Morling, used to wheel me out during my first spring. My mother and my uncle passed this information on to me. Nobody would doubt it's accuracy notwithstanding the events took place over sixty years ago.

Luke was a serious biographer. He would have talked about the birth of Jesus to Mary herself, or to James her son, or to the Apostle John, who took the mother of Jesus into his own home. Mary would never have forgotten the amazing events that accompanied her son's birth. They would have remained vivid to her and she would have passed the information on to the leaders of the early church. There is no reason why some record should not have been made of the advent stories at a very early date.

The gospel writers' accounts of Jesus birth are just as reliable as my account of my birth. The Bishop's remarks when tested against experience prove to be nonsense. I would rather put my faith in a mother's memories than a Bishop's theories.