Why do women still become sequels, not equals?

WHAT luck. Just when it seemed that the world's most famous implants had vanished forever behind that terminally boring baby of hers, and Baywatch ratings had collapsed in the UK, and a thousand sweaty editors seemed bereft of even the usual threadbare reasons to splatter pictures of her mammaries across a thousand tabloid fronts Pammie delivers.

Pammie - surprise, surprise - files for divorce. Heaven. Cue the usual parade of pulsating Pammie pies: Ever Ready Pammie ("Don't Call Me Babe"), all skin tight rubber, collagen pumped lips big bleached hair and bigger silicone bosom; spaced out Pammie all in white (bikini) for her Mexican beach wedding, stoned on tequila and God knows what else, plighting her troth to Tommy Lee; gleeful Pammie, flaunting her ring finger with its "Tommy" wedding ring tattoo.

Happy days, then, all of 21 months ago. Sad turn out for the poor baby. Dreadful to see young love blighted. Nasty pass we've come to, etc etc. Hardly unexpected, though.

We may assume there was no pre marriage course, or even a little light reflection, given that the courtship lasted all of five days. And Pammie, for all her gifts is no rocket scientist. Neither is Tommy, a drummer by profession, but nicknamed T-Bone for reasons which - as Jeremy Paxman sniffed on BBC's Newsnight - need not detain us here. Just your average Hollywood coupling really.

But, we are obliged to ask gravely, are there lessons to be learned from this misfortune? Sure it might look like just another excuse to use more pictures of Pamela. But is there not a suitable subject here for psychological analysis? Pammie claims she had no idea what she was getting into with tattooed all over T Bone Tommy. This, of course, is denial on a monumental scale.

THE air in and around her fluffy head was already thick with the tracks of Tommy's violent, drug crazed, love cheating antics when she met him. He proposed to his girlfriend two weeks before meeting Pammie. He beat up a previous wife on their honeymoon. She knew all this.

So why didn't she heed the warnings? What is it that brings women crawling like lemmings towards these emotionally stunted conmen who should carry a Government Health Warning but rejoice instead in the label "Love Rats"?

Regrettably, this is not an exclusive club. Deya Pichardo was living with Daniel Day Lewis for a year until she opened the papers one day to read that the smouldering one had gone and married Rebecca Miller, daughter of the playwright Arthur Miller.

"He never told me a thing. Not a call, not a letter," she said. What a ninny to expect such civilities from him, of all people, the man who had used a fax to end his relationship with the actress Isabelle Adjani, then seven months pregnant with his child.

And why did it take the intelligent and glamorous Jerry Hall an aeon to realise Mick Jagger was equally sad and stunted? Here was a woman who seemed to have all the answers, banging on interminably about being a wife in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. But even in such a fantasyland, he saw no reason to rein in his adolescent appetites.

"Every so often I had to go out and sort of kick some girl on the shin. .", Jerry has said. "Now I realise he's never going to change. This has been very hard for me."

And though Princess Stephanie of Monaco has never made any claim to intellectual depths, even she must have spotted a certain disturbing pattern in Daniel Ducruet, the bodyguard who had already fathered children by two different women, and abandoned a wife and small baby for the happy princess, before being caught in flagrante with "Miss Naked Breast of Belgium".

Forget the women for a moment. What have these men got that draws women in swarms, and what is it that turns them into such sad, unfulfilled creatures despite it all?

Depending on which theory appeals, they are either the sad products of fathers who "escaped" their mothers - either by getting divorced or being workaholic or chasing other women - and grew up thinking that manhood meant escaping from a woman's control. Or they suffered from seductive but emotionally distant mothers which triggered the early discovery that to attract and keep this woman's attentions, they had to develop a heightened perceptiveness and sensitivity around her.

Hence, armed with these invaluable techniques, they moved to manhood with all the talents of a good salesman; good listeners with a highly developed understanding of women, able to adapt like chameleons to the needs of their latest prey. This man is best exemplified by the type who, when told that your favourite bedtime reading is ninth century feminist poetry, will reply with incredulous, soul searing intensity: "So is mine".

Imagine for a moment you (being female) and Daniel Day Lewis, still strangers across a crowded room. He locks his eyes on you and says: "When I saw you, it was like a scene where everything in the room stops and there is a spotlight shining on you".

SO says poor Deya at any rate about his chat up line. Could anyone resist it? And even if the prey suspects that it's total bunkum, there is still something about him, some irresistible force.

"It's the bastard factor, actually," says an intelligent, streetwise, young Irishwoman wryly, admitting that she falls for it. She should watch out.

Lying ahead may be membership of that female club, descended from a long line of rat addicted Pollyannas, groaning with ulcers and migraine and bookshelves with (real) self help titles such as Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives, Women Who Love too Much, Nasty Men: How To Stop Being Hurt By Them Without Stooping To Their Level and Smart Women, Foolish Choices.

Does this mean there are no female love cheats? Many men claim to have known a few, but the more "celebrated" ones, such as Julia Roberts and Fergie, are portrayed as merely misguided, lonely and pathetic - while in fact, being no more so than the ageing male Love Mice seen around Dublin night clubs, patting their breast pockets to make sure the wedding ring is still there.

Jeremy Paxman wheeled an animal expert in to the BBC this week to try and explain the whole conundrum. This expert judged it comparable to chimpanzees, whose males worry incessantly about the other lads getting to the females and impregnating them first. This, it appears, makes them "incredibly promiscuous", but very desirable to the females who sense the better genes in the more predatory ones and therefore more babies.

Wittingly or not, a 56 year old nightclub owner called Peter Stringfellow allowed himself to be a model for the brainless, rampaging male in this instance. Metaphorically thumping his chest, he announced that his current girlfriend is 17.

"Women marry Mick Jagger and then want him to turn into Cliff Richard," he declared, affecting to be puzzled by such obtuseness. To which Kathy Lette, the novelist (and decidedly no model for the air head female chimp), replied that women wanted to be treated as "equals, not sequels".

She placed her cards firmly on the table: "Any woman who calls herself a post feminist has kept her Wonderbra and burnt her brain". Mr Stringfellow then assumed typical Love Rat mode and admired her earrings. Ms Lette refused to melt.

"I'd like to wear your testicles as earrings," she said.

No doubt Mr Stringfellow left the studio, convinced that, secretly, she fancied him like mad. Maybe she did. What do we know?

If Jeremy Paxman can't sort it out, what hope have the rest of us?