When I learned earlier this week that man flu is real, or that at least men suffer the ravages of seasonal bugs to far greater an extent than the fairer sex, I celebrated. At last, this slur on men as malingerers – perpetrated no doubt by the international female conspiracy and makers of television adverts that screen in the winter months – would now be ended.
The more I thought about it, I couldn't decide: was this news a triumph or a defeat? On the triumph side, men are now free to recuperate in peace from what is, actually, quite a debilitating condition thank you very much. There is no longer any need for us to be bullied when laid low, thwacked with accusations of snivelling self-pity, told that we deserve nothing better than being locked in the cupboard under the stairs with nothing but a copy of the sports pages and a solitary cocktail sausage for company. That doesn't happen to me by the way, no. It's a friend of mine.
The aspects which linger longer in the mind, however, are those that whiff of defeat. First, there's the headline fact that our immune systems are weaker than those of women. (Explained one of the researchers behind the study, Maya Saleh, "Women have a more powerful inflammatory response than men." Doctor, you're telling me.) But it's the reason behind this comparative weakness which is, to me, far more concerning; apparently women have stronger immune systems because evolution wants them alive.
Apologies if that statement makes evolution sound like something that should be fighting the Fantastic Four rather than a process that slowly removes the tails from monkeys, but needs must. Evolution wants women robust, to stay alive so that they can bear children for the purposes of regenerating the human race. At the same time it is quite happy to leave men hovering precariously between life and death, propped up solely by an intravenous feed of Lemsip. That is how evolution rolls.
Damn you evolution! Or, if one is so inclined, damn you Mrs God! But the question remains: if evolution doesn't care whether men are whisked Lethe-wards by any of the billions of bugs that hurtle round the planet every nanosecond, why did it bring us here in the first place? Why did it not simply make do with fashioning little sperm sacs that could sit handily in the fridge ready for their moment? What is it that us men bring to the world that has made our fragile existence worthwhile? Surely it couldn't simply be our prowess at mowing the lawn. Or our instinctive ability to orientate ourselves in foreign cities. Heaven forfend that we were plonked on this planet simply to explain how to work the remote control – "Yes darling, that is how you find the freeview channels. Forgive me, I must now shuffle off this mortal coil."
This news has hit me like a hammer blow, I must confess, and indeed I may need to take to my bed for a couple of days to recover. But when I do recover, and by goodness I will, there will be a reckoning. I will demand from evolution an explanation as to man's ultimate uselessness and until I hear back I will withdraw all services as a freelance alphabetiser of CDs. For real.
