EASILY IRRITATED as I no doubt am, I found myself apoplectic the other day at a Times interview with Microsoft chairman and billionaire Bill Gates. His female interviewer, while paying lip service to his success, did everything possible to indicate there was no "emotional core" in this man who has "a personality with all the warmth of a tray of ice cubes."

The whole thrust of the thing was to mock "a genius with a soul built from microchips" (the headline), a man who has possibly "been assembled from a box of optic wires and microchips."

This notion of a man supposedly having no "emotional core" merely because he is enormously rich and successful is unutterably tedious. There is absolutely no reason to think that a man's attractiveness should necessarily be in inverse proportion to his material success.

At the risk of some critical reaction (say sexual torture followed by a spot of rack stretching thumbscrewing and live burial) it must be said this is a peculiarly female notion. If one reads of a successful female boss one can confidently expect assurances (at least from a female interviewer) that despite her vast material success and formidable intellect she has remained a warm and loving and fully rounded person with an emotional core which glows through her whole being.

Having discovered that one of Bill's favourite novels is The Great Gatsby, the interviewer suggested to him that perhaps he did have a romantic heart, "since Fitzgerald's hero lived in a mansion where lawns led to a waterfront."

She found that this comparison seemed to annoy him: "Gatsby [responded Bill] had a deck to walk on from where he was able to see the light from Daisy's house. Gatsby collected things. He represented opportunity. You can do or have anything. An American view Fitzgerald found naive."

That is the most succinct and accurate summary of Gatsby, the man and the book, I have ever read. I am not surprised Bill Gates was annoyed at the interviewer's reading of it. There is absolutely nothing innately romantic about a waterside mansion.

This is becoming tedious. Let us cheer ourselves up with a look back on the life of the late actor Sid James.

According to a recent biography by Cliff Goodwin (Century, £15.99), Sid was a chain smoker and drank a bottle of whisky daily. He fiddled his income tax, gambled obsessively, borrowed money from friends with no intention of repaying them, and never bought a round. Hugely in demand as a film and TV actor, he made heaps of money. But according to his agent, Sid made Scrooge look like a public benefactor.

Moreover, he discarded wives, mistresses, relatives and children without a second thought. He never made any attempt to see his three illegitimate children. He was "too busy" to attend his mother's funeral.

Not too much emotional core there. You would think then that Sid, a South African Jew who passed himself off for professional purposes as a genuine Cockney, who was also a pig eyed acne scarred pile afflicted fatty, must have had little success with women. Yet his biographer claims he was one of the century's great seducers - and provides plenty of evidence. The pianist Harry Rabinowitz knew him for most of his life and said that "There never was a week when Sid was short of females in his life."

In other words he was greatly loved despite not much evidence of an "emotional core". What he had was charm. I now consider proven the non relation of a man's "emotional core" to his material success and for attractiveness.

If women insist on the touchy feely thing they should perhaps just interview their own sex. It is notable that in the speculation surrounding who will take the place of the late lamented Marjorie Proops, agony aunt at the Mirror, the likelihood of it being a man is, thankfully, considered remote. There are very few agony uncles. Philip Hodson is one (now writing for Family Circle, the women's magazine) but he has revealed that a job offer once made to him by the Sunday Mirror was vetoed by the late Robert Maxwell, on the grounds that Hodson "did not have a big enough bust."

I think that is very reasonable and shows that even if Maxwell had a block of solid ice masquerading as his "emotional core" he at least had a sense of humour.