Ruth Walker: I've heard women dump boyfriends because their feet are too hairy, they have bad taste in shoes or can't dance

POOR Jennifer Aniston. Single again, after dumping that good-for-nothing hanger-on John Mayer. Well, what's a girl to do when her man won't return her calls, yet the little twit still seems to find plenty time to Twitter?

Couples split up for all kinds of odd reasons. One girlfriend of mine eventually ditched her partner because she got so irritated every time she watched him chomp through his food that she feared she might stab him with a steak knife. Another threw out her bloke because he didn't know the difference between ovulation and menstruation (show me a man who does, and I'll show you a man who needs to get in touch with his masculine side double-quick).

Fern Britton, meanwhile, has apparently given Philip Schofield the boot after realising that the definition of who is the bigger star has nothing to do with dress size.

I've heard of women dumping their boyfriends because their feet are too hairy, they have bad taste in shoes, can't dance for toffee or have questionable personal hygiene habits. (The latter, I hasten to add, is a perfectly reasonable reason for leaving the love of your life. No toothpaste, mister, no tonsil hockey.)

By the same token, there are other women who put up with such brazen ineptitude and shocking levels of fecklessness from the men in their lives that if there was any justice in the world, they would be in line for deification.

Consider the lovely lady of my acquaintance, whose live-in boyfriend is so totally and utterly incompetent in the kitchen that he admits to having never used the cooker. Ever. He lives on takeaways. We're not even sure he is capable of microwaving up a ready meal.

One morning, however, after she had doused the grill in Mr Muscle, he decided to break with tradition and rustle up a bacon sarnie in her absence. He vaguely registered all that foam and dirty water in the grill pan, assumed "it was meant to be like that" and proceeded to make his brekkie. It tasted a bit strange, he conceded, but so far he has suffered no ill effects – bar the general mocking dismay from those of us she has seen fit to confide in. Which is the majority of the office along with any random passers-by she thinks look in need of cheering up.

But one has to question how a grown man gets to his 30s without knowing what his own cooker looks like. And the worst bit is, he is genuinely bemused by everyone else's hilarity. Bless.

Then there's wee Cheryl Cole, who seems absurdly immune to all her husband's philandering, wastrel ways. She could have any man on the planet, yet there she is, hanging on to nasty Ashley's arm, smile frozen like rigor mortis on those sweet lips, wedding ring on and off with more regularity than her hubbie's boxers, while he looks like a man who has had his cake and eaten it. Then gone back for second helpings. With cream.

So, girls, I reckon that it's time to get tough on our men. Take a leaf out of Angelina Jolie's book – if Jen had put her foot down long ago, she might never have let Brad slip through her fingers in the first place. First, we find Angie coming home from a hard day at the office to find the handsome, hen-pecked Brad giving the (rather attractive) nanny a consoling hug. Ange doesn't stick around for explanations: she gives her man a swift right hook straight in the chops and then fires the slatternly childcare provider on the spot.

Less than a week later, she gets back to Brangelina towers, having done a full day's work and then picked up the groceries from Aldi on the way home. What's her hard-working himbo up to? Snoozing on the sofa, that's what, with a beer by his side, DVD on the telly and brood of bonkers babies wreaking havoc downstairs. Angie flips her lid, shakes Brad awake and gives him what for.

Now 'friends' reckon their relationship is on the rocks. Ain't love the Pitts.