Rosie Millard: Real men love housework

So, given the choice, men prefer doing most of the housework. Who knew? According to researchers from Cambridge, using a survey of 30,000 households, chaps find that home life is a lot smoother if they do the cooking, washing, cleaning and shopping. Rather than letting their grumbling other halves do it.

They suggest this is because men have discovered that rushing with open arms towards the rubber gloves, rather than regularly collapsing on the sofa means a, less internal guilt and b, no noisy nagging. Hence, an easier life all round.

Of course, Cambridge thinks this is a direct result of global female emancipation. "Women are becoming more assertive and making their dissatisfaction with lazy partners plain," say the academics.

I'm not at all sure this is true. Apparently, when women go on holiday, you can always identify the Alpha Female, because she'll be the one in the kitchen. Maybe it's the same at home. If your husband wants to stake out his place over loading the dishwasher and takes pride in wielding the Mr Muscle, maybe there is a message to be absorbed here. He who does the lion's share becomes the lion. According to Paul Hollywood, baking ace and resident hunk on The Great British Bake Off, men are always tweeting him pictures of cakes they have just created. Honestly.

Kitchen designers understand this; indeed, if you look at current trends, there's a lot of big, tough stuff going on in kitchens. It's all about terrifying gadgets which reinforce the idea of the kitchen as laboratory, racing car, and hi-pressure catering zone smoothly capable of delivering the highest possible placing in the social barometer which is the DPS (Dinner Party Stakes).

Perhaps it's a subtle way of redressing the balance; anxious about "career women" advancing in the boardroom and achieving all-round excellence at school, blokes have decided en masse, to undermine the soft underbelly of the Domestic Goddess. You know those smiling dads at the school cake sale? They're the ones to watch.