The truth may or may not be out there

I see from the internet that it is more likely that there are aliens in our galaxy than that I will fall in love, in London, with someone who loves me back. A 31 year old professor whose name is tenuously linked to Warwick University has said that he is looking for a London-based female aged between 24 and 34 who has a university education. He has estimated that he would be physically attracted to about five percent of all ladies who fit those criteria. Then, using the assumption that these women, too, will have similar criteria of their own and will probably only have a five percent chance of fancying him, he has calculated that there are 26 women in the UK who fit his bill, meaning that "on a given night out in London there is a 0.00034% chance of meeting one of these special people. That's a 1 in 285,00 chance. Not great."

Not great indeed, for him. Fortunately, things for me are a lot more footloose. For a start, I don't care if my man has gone to university or not, nor whether he lives in London. I do, of course, need to find him funny and knee-weakeningly attractive, and he needs to have good manners and help me on with my coat, and be clever and creative and cool and swim against the tide and all that malarkey. But that's not asking much now, is it. Plus, after watching this the other day on YouTube, in HD full-screen, the idea that we are alone in space is so laughable that I suddenly don't blame those mental UFO-hunters for searching so wildly. We are not alone. And given that I am currently in love with about thirty people, including some girls, a Celebrity Big Brother contestant and my teenage Japanese hairdresser, I think the only conclusion we can draw is that there are aliens out there, and that, while science may be good on some subjects, it doesn't know much about my lovelife.