GOOD news for romantic saps everywhere. Contrary to what we always thought, it has emerged that women do not prefer "bad boys", as such. It's just that the latter type has lower standards than the rest of us: aiming - insofar as he aims at all - at a much wider range of targets. His apparent success rate is therefore only a product of the law of averages, writes Frank McNally
That's according to a study reported in this week's New Scientistand conducted by researchers at a US university. They tested 200 students for three personality traits known to psychologists as the "dark triad": a tendency to lie and manipulate; selfishness bordering on narcissism; and a disregard for the consequences of impulsive behaviour. James Bond is the fictional archetype.
The researchers found that men with high "dark triad" scores were much more active in seeking short-term affairs. And this, rather than some innate desire in women to be lied to and cheated by low-life cads, explains their high scoring-rates generally.
The bad news is that the tactic does work. Being rich and famous - like Mick Jagger or Warren Beatty - obviously helps. But according to the researchers, the survival of bad-boy genes, despite centuries of social disapproval, suggests that such behaviour is a "successful evolutionary strategy".
AT THE opposite end of the spectrum from James Bond is man-in-the-news Nicolas Le Marecha. A 35-year-old French engineer based in Romania, he is reported to have fallen in love with a woman he met on the Bucharest metro last month, when he stopped her to ask directions. Since when, the hapless romantic has been posting advertisements in all the city's train stations, desperate to find her again.
As part of his campaign, he even hired an artist to draw her picture, based on his identikit recollection: "Dark brown hair, brown-to-black eyes, five feet seven inches tall, not too thin, not too fat." Apart from the hair, the mystery female sounds like Goldilocks. But the lovelorn engineer insists she is "absolutely beautiful" and adds: "She is a ray of light I always think of." This is the problem with romantics. If I were the woman, I would now be worried about my worthiness for the pedestal he has erected.
After all, if it really was love at first sight, why did he let her catch that train (or get off it, as the case may be), rather than declare his condition there and then. Was it only when she was gone that the thunderbolt hit him? Maybe that was the "ray of light" he mentions. Or maybe she really was at her 100-watt best on the day he met her. But it's all about sustainable energy these days, especially in relationships. A soft, environmentally-friendly glow might be the best she can produce most of the time.
"I only want to know her better," Mr Le Marecha said. "I feel something is missing from my life since I last saw her." Fair enough. We can only wish him well in his search. Even so, I fear his is not a successful evolutionary strategy.
THERE'S A poignant aptness to the news that Shootmagazine has folded at the age of 39. Like many of its one-time readers, I assumed it had closed years ago. But clearly it had just been dropping down the divisions in recent times in an effort to prolong a career in professional football. At 39, and reduced to a quarter of its peak circulation, it was time to hang up the boots.
Shoot will be best remembered by men of a certain age for its "league ladders" - the annual cardboard giveaway with T-shaped tabs of all the English football club names that you could slot into the correct order after every week's games. In the pre-internet era, this was interactive publishing at its most sophisticated.
It also suited the simpler hierarchical structures of a time before Division 1 became the "Premiership", Division 2 became the "Championship", and Division 3 became "League 1". Now you'd need a Shoot ladder just to remind yourself of the real pecking order of the various English leagues.
The magazine's demise reminds me of an incident on the old ITV programme The Big Match about a million years ago. It concerned my then hero, Peter Osgood, who, as well as being a striker with Chelsea was - in a parallel world that did not concern me at that time - a bit of a bad boy.
Apparently his admirers also included Raquel Welsh, the well-known actress and sex-bomb (she was safely defused a few years later) - a fact that inspired The Big Match to send her to a Chelsea game one Saturday. And after showing footage of her post-match meeting with Osgood on the Sunday programme, presenter Brian Moore joked that neither of them had been contactable since.
I was dimly aware that he was alluding to certain interests that adult footballers might have other than football. But being nine years old at the time, it was all rather embarrassing, and I didn't want to think about it. Luckily, there was always Shootto return the focus firmly to the pitch.
I'm amazed the magazine survived until now. For me it will always belong to a hopelessly innocent era when soccer stars were only moderately overpaid, when "wags" were men who shouted funny comments from football terraces, and when - even in the tabloids - a "roasting" was something that only ever happened to slow full-backs.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie