There is nothing like a fag hanging out of the mouth to attract the blokes. It adds that mysterious, alluring quality that marks you as a sophisticated young woman. Sadly, in Australia, these days it is a husband attracting technique that is becoming increasingly difficult to utilise. The places that you would go to acquire such a male, affectionately known as a "meat market", are increasingly being made smoke free.

What is a girl to do? Why turn to the internet of course. You can puff away to your hearts content whilst sitting in your bedroom plying your seductive wares on the internet dating sites.

The most popular dating service in Australia (apparently, since The Green Man has no need for such services) is www.rsvp.com.au and Dr Simon Chapman of School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Dr Melanie Wakefield and Dr Sarah Durkin of Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer have been visiting RSVP, purely in the name of research of course.

They found that the women advertising themselves on RSVP were more likely to be smokers than the general population of women. The same applied to men over 50.

This raises the question of whether women in the "desparate and dateless" category are more likely to be smokers generally or is it just the fag addicted ones that resort to internet dating services. One thing that the study found was that even across the internet, smoking was a big turn-off. Admitting that you were a regular smoker was a guaranteed way of dramatically reducing the number of people that would respond to your advertisement.

Another interesting little statistic was that, even before a potential suitor knew whether a person was a smoker or non-smoker, they were more likely to pick a non-smoker. Something about the pictures of non-smokers made them more attractive than the pictures of their smoking competition and one can presume that they did not have a fag hanging out of their mouth in the photo.

The results for young women were not reflected for young men. It seems that if you are a young man you have to do a lot more than just give up the fags to make yourself attractive and, as a consequence, dateable.

Read more about their research in Medical Journal of Australia.