Q. What makes a guy sensitive?

This week’s question comes from “Monkeyman” – a nom de plume if ever I heard one.

Men are sensitive for different reasons. I am particularly sensitive to the smell of ascorbic acid. It’s the citrusy je ne sais quoi that gets my dingles dangling. My eighth son had particularly sensitive skin, and we had to rub him all over with whale blubber and Tate and Lyle’s Golden Syrup every evening, before lowering him into a vat of olive oil that doubled as his bed.

But I think our simian friend’s question is more about emotional sensitivity. Why do some men have the innate ability to cry in the cinema and talk about flower arrangements?

My brother-in-law, Frédéric de Mont-Joie-de-Vénus, was a particularly sensitive soul, fatally acute to the sentiments of the fairer sex. I say fatally, because poor old Frédéric ended up taking his own life by ingesting four thousand rose petals and a bottle of whisky after his girlfriend at the time, the equally ill-fated Cécily de Tetons de Fer, suggested that he might like to trim his nose hair, which was putting her off her petits-fours.

We asked our physician to identify the reason for his misfortune. The answer was categorical: babies who are born with their umbilical cords wrapped around their necks are eighteen times more likely to grow into sensitive adult men. There is little you can do to prevent this occurring, it appears, but armed with this knowledge parents can prepare themselves for a lifetime of sniffling and pansy-like whimpering emanating from their child’s bedroom.