`Agony uncles are a part of our cultural currency nowadays. When I started, it annoyed me that I was referred to almost mockingly as an agony aunt. I’m not. This is a new thing. It doesn’t have a historical background to it.”
Matthew Whyman is a journalist with a primary degree in media production and a Masters in creative writing. He's married with a young baby. He has an advice column, called Ask Matt, in B magazine, a periodical aimed at women aged 18-25. Whyman worked as a researcher for an agony uncle before setting up in his own right with another young-women's monthly, Nine- teen. In his capacity as emotional adviser, he has appeared on national radio in Britain and worked extensively on the Internet.
Under his by-line in B, one reads: "Want to know what really happens in a man's brain? Then ask Matt." So, much of what he does is explaining men to women. As for most agony uncles whose articles are geared primarily towards a female audience, about 20 per cent of Matthew's correspondence comes from males - though he neither publishes nor replies personally to them.
"Boys in their mid-teens and younger are predominantly worried about their tackle," he reveals, in colourful vernacular. "How it works. Whether it's too big or too short. If she'll laugh. All the things you'd never ask your mates. As they get older, it's the gender divide and somehow not understanding each other."
Whyman has no doubt that girls are more sexually literate, as he puts it, than their male counterparts. They grow up in an environment where they've got the information to hand. They're encouraged to talk about their bodies and their emotions.
By the same token, women's curiosity for the male perspective is one of the reasons for the proliferation of these avuncular admonishers, he says. "They get a chance to ask questions of a man who understands them and isn't going to giggle and tell his mates, like the lads they know.
"Men shut off very quickly. I get letters from girls who've already asked their boyfriends something. They either haven't got a straight answer or suspect it's not right," he says.
Tony Horkins, advice columnist with More, New Woman and the Daily Mail, says: "One of the surprises that has come out of my work is that men are having the same sexual and emotional problems as women. They want longterm commitments. The difference is that when males get the partner they want, they give up. Whereas women want to keep the passion and romance up forever."
Clive Garland, a psychotherapist with the Clanwilliam Institute in Dublin, takes a special interest in men's issues. He believes whether the agony uncle-ing goes on in women's or men's magazines, the benefit to men may come through observation rather than participation. "Men tend to respond very poorly to situations like this," he says. "They don't have a lineage of an emotional language to draw on to talk about their experiences, yet they have awful sexual problems: they can't make love to women they're intimate with, only those they can keep at a distance; they get into marriages and affairs and don't know where they are."
Like many professionals, Garland is suspicious of the media advice column, even though he has appeared in the role on the Gerry Ryan radio show and once considered doing a print version. "There's a particular skill to doing it," he says. "You have to be sharp, incisive, strong and not always apologising for being a man. Men are so ashamed in this area."
Garland emphasises that men are profoundly interested in their emotional sphere, even if they confuse intimacy towards one another with homosexuality, and find it difficult to be honest without being ironic.
Although extroverted vulgarity is no longer the sole preserve of the masculine gender, agony uncle pages generally adopt a more laddish vocabulary and tone. The men's magazine, Maxim, has its own take on attempts to initiate a dialogue between men. Their answer comes in the form of the Agony Barman.
"Problems Gentlemen, Please," announces the magazine as it grades every dilemma from one to five glasses of whisky. Agony Barman is wildly over-the-top, dispensing with all pretence of being politically correct. The advice is served up in a very direct, crude and comically downhome idiom. Yet behind all the bluster there's a serious intention. It's hosted by Adam Rayner, son of perhaps the most famous agony aunt of all, Claire Rayner.
"The complete idea was presented to me," admits Adam, whose journalistic expertise lay in high-fi, until Maxim. "I'm a closet sensitive type. The idea of Agony Barman is the millennium man - he's beyond the new lad and years ahead of the new man. He's quite happy to organise a bit of high culture but not afraid to admit he likes women's breasts.
"It takes away the brow-beating," he says. "A chap can read it for a bit of fun. The point is to get blokes laughing and picking up what's said at the same time.
`Granted, the offer of the Bourbon for every letter published is morally questionable. It's a form of blackmail. On the other hand, it's precisely the right escape clause to lure fellows into opening up. They can always plead they did it for the booze," he says.
"Typically, men will ignore difficulties until it's too late and the damage is done."
The questions that arise at the Agony Barman's counter vary from concerns about gambling, marital infidelity and alcoholism, to ways of deciding whether your partner is faking her orgasms, testicular cancer and how young fathers can cope with children whose crying gets under their skin.
"Naturally I had a wealth of information to turn to when I took it on," says Adam. "My mother was thrilled. She offered before I asked. We're seriously linked up with a vast network of self-help groups and counselling organisations. If I make one guy bite his lip instead of tearing the face off someone I'll be happy."
As Terry & June, the anonymous agony uncle with the new Irish gay publication, Innuendo, testifies: "The image of the isolated and alone rural homosexual, unsure whether to come out or not, in many ways distils the essence of the male experience of reaching out for help to another man."
Dr Raj Persaud's Session in Cosmopolitan magazine is one of the more unusual ventures in advice columns. It's interactive and dynamic. Readers phone him up. He then prints an edited transcript of the conversation. "Without being too disparaging I give more than the traditional `tea and sympathy' of the agony people. I don't provide solutions but it's action-oriented. I explore the problem with the person and aid them to a more self-empowering journey. In any case, the ability to listen isn't the sole preserve of women."
Whizz-kid psychiatrist Persaud, author of Staying Sane, features weekly in the Daily Mail, and also hosts ring-ins on talk radio in Britain as well as on Granada TV's Richard & Judy-inspired This Morning. Both sexes write to him in their droves, but far greater numbers of men make contact over the phone. "It's less passive and I think it's a confidence thing," says Dr Raj. "There's a comeback for men too. They like that because they're competitive and, for them, conversation has to have a point. Their letters are invariably very short, compared to the reams and reams women will write."
Adrian Kennedy, head of news with FM104 in Dublin, presents The Love Line with the editor of U magazine, Annette O'Meara. The radio station consciously decided to have a man and women on the show, this is one reason why men and women call in equal numbers. Also, the instant satisfaction available - in that questions can be replied to almost immediately - appeals to the masculine need to see results. O'Meara believes, however, that still most men tend not to accept responsibility for their problems.
Kennedy says he doesn't see why more men don't enter the field. However, he doesn't like the term agony uncle, feeling it trivialises the job. "The most important thing is that you're a good listener. Men have a caring side. They just don't show it as easily," Adrian says.
"The advice I give might be more practical and straightforward sometimes. That's the only difference I've noticed about what I do."
Matthew Whyman adds: “The advent of agony uncles has marked a shift away in advice columns from asking for guidance and receiving moral judgments towards simply looking for opinions about the male perspective. Who better to do that than a man?”
