Here’s something you might think it was unlikely you would ever see:

‘Not tonight, Joséphine.’ Napoleon Bonaparte’s lacklustre response to the bedtime blandishments of his wife is being repeated every evening in bedrooms across the country. Men are simply going off sex, according to the UK’s largest firm of relationship counsellors.

Relate, which provides counselling, sex therapy and relationship education, said there had been a 40 per cent increase in male clients admitting that, despite being physically able to have sex, they can’t be bothered.

No, it’s not because they can’t have sex, it’s because they’re not really worried about it. Even more, it’s not because they don’t want to have sex with their wives (a regrettable state of affairs to be sure, but not one that has been all that unusual in history) but would like to do so with women perhaps unobtainable. No, it’s just the whole idea of sex simply isn’t all that fascinating any more.

Who would have thought of that happening?

Various possible explanations are offered and the one I find funniest is the idea that as women know more about what they want these days, or perhaps it’s rather that they’re a great deal more vocal in letting on what they want, thus men find it all too much of a strain. That makes us sound even more wimpish than just not being interested really.

However, there is one explanation which we can reject entirely:

Professor Cary Cooper, president of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, agreed. ‘Men have less social support and, as a generalisation, are less emotionally intelligent than women and have not traditionally been encouraged to share their feelings,’ he said.

Cooper, who is professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University, also blamed Britain’s culture of long working hours. ‘Britain’s work culture has gone from 9 to 5 to extremely long hours, which makes for a very stressful life,’ he said. ‘Stress can be cumulative, which means eventually people can find it impossible to switch off and relax.’

I agree, as a thesis, it sounds plausible. The stresses and strains of modern life, long working hours culture, yadda, yadda.

The only unfortunate thing is, male working hours have been declining for at least a century, both paid work outside the home and unpaid work in it. So the stress associated with work has also been declining: so sad, isn’t it, when a beautiful theory gets destroyed by an inconvenient fact?