A row has broken out between men and women. How extraordinary. Never heard of such a thing. This time, it's about Valentine's Day. Hmm, unusual.

The commercially driven celebration of love takes place every March. Or is it April? It's next week? You're kidding. Oh well, still plenty of time to get down the garage for something.

Except that some chaps are calling for a boycott. Well, I'm doing that classic media thing of making a plural out of one fellow, but there's bound to be others thinking along the same lines as Marc Rudov, of Californiashire, USA.

He's a "relationship expert" - good lord, whatever will they think of next? - and the author of a book whose title is too rude to mention here among decent, regular citizens, some of whom have been known to faint at hearing the word "vest".

Marc believes unscrupulous females have a vested interest in V-Day, and that there cannot be true equality while women force men to spend their hard-earned dosh on this palaver.

He ululated: "There's nothing romantic about coercing men to oblige female entitlement. Valentine's Day artificially and unilaterally caters to women. It's the media's annual male-bashing fest."

Well, I think we're all agreed on that.

But Marc hasn't finished there. He says the whenever-it-is of February should be renamed "Nomance Day" and that all "real men" should boycott it.

Not being a real man myself - there's more hair on a billiard ball than on my torso - I'm not sure what to do, though I've sympathy with Marc's critique of what he calls this annual "sextortion".

You needn't make much effort on Valentine's Day, though arguably the money could be spent on better things.

Such as oneself.

You could have eight pints and a pie for the cost of a fancy bouquet.

But there isn't much to sending flowers now. If they're to a lass with whom you're not yet arguing under the same roof, or who may live distantly (the ideal arrangement), you just do it online. Takes five minutes. And you needn't smell the ghastly foliage.

Of course, you don't see what arrives and just hope that it isn't something wilting, which might be taken as symbolic.

Once, I sent a gal some rather fetching dark flowers, which she sniffily said represented a death threat in some cultures. Gordon H Bennett, is nothing simple?

In my experience, women like flowers the first couple of times you send them, but are bored by the third. Woman to female pal (generally poisonous): "He's sent flowers again. What do you think I should do?"

Female pal: "Call the police."

Marc says he went to a florist and asked how many women bought flowers for men. The florist laughed for 10 minutes and told him: "Women don't buy flowers for men." In fact, women buy very little for men.

Predictably, Mr Rudov has been metaphorically kneed in the nads by womenoids, one of whom screeched: "No woman is going to put up with this boycott."

DeAnna Lorraine, of San Diegoshire, another relationship expert - there's more than one? - claimed controversially that V-Day was "about love and the expression of love", I see.

Well, what to get the love of my life? I think eight pints and a pie ought to do it.