WHAT’S it like to be a man these days? I was in the kitchen when this topic came up on the radio. It was suggested that modern men should do more cooking and have less access to pornography.

I was making bread at the time. Later I was planning to make an apple crumble. That’s where I’ve been going wrong: too much cooking and not enough pornography.

The discussion was sparked by a Sunday newspaper report on the Being A Man festival on London’s South Bank.

Half a lifetime ago, that was my stomping ground. Had I still been in London, I would have popped along to find out about being a man.

As it was, I was kneading dough in my old running clothes, having just done a Sunday circuit of six or seven miles – a manly enough pursuit, although you see as many women as men out running.

Whether or not women return to get flour all over their tracksuit bottoms is another matter.

The festival was the idea of a woman. Perhaps only a woman would get round to organising such an event. A man would be too busy pretending to do something else, hiding behind a newspaper or talking about football. I leave football to those better equipped for the task. Plenty of men talk of little else, I find.

Jude Kelly, artistic director at the Southbank Centre, a founding director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse and a onetime director of the York Festival, was the brains behind the festival.

The event saw high-profile men leading discussions on maleness.

Among those taking part was the veteran Channel 4 broadcaster Jon Snow, who has talked previously about being a man. Snow believes it is good to talk. “It is sure time to talk about men,” he said. “Men and change; men and women; and why many men fear both change and women.”

Snow is interesting on the role of men, and it is important that someone so prominent and successful should be prepared to discuss what it means to be a man – or to overhaul masculinity, as Kelly put it.

Another participant in the festival was the Turner Prize-winning potter Grayson Perry, who is soon to be visiting the Yorkshire Museum with his teddy.

Perry’s approach to the matter at hand is a little unusual. He clothes his manliness in the brightest, prettiest frock he can find. “I’m pretty alpha but I’m also a tranny,” says Perry. “Vulnerability is not a weakness.”

Not many men would adopt Perry’s approach. Yet this matter of vulnerability is interesting, as traditionally men were not allowed to appear weak.

Maleness was all about strength. Most men are physically stronger than most women, yet a man can still feel vulnerable. In many ways, men are vulnerable, especially young men. Telling statistics discussed at the festival, reportedly, included the fact that 95 per cent of the prison population remains male, while 75 per cent of suicides are men, mostly below the age of 35.

British boys are said to be less likely than ever to be brought up with a man in the house or a male teacher at primary school. As it happens, I’ve double-bucked that one: I was often around and our eldest is now a young male primary school teacher.

Our three saw plenty of me when growing up, apart from when I sneaked off to work or to play squash or whatever. We remain close and keep in touch, with texts arriving from my student daughter addressed to “Daddio.”

Husband, father, son, friend, long-lost friend and colleague: I guess a man can be many things, and there is certainly nothing wrong with admitting to being vulnerable.

• “THERE’S never been a better time to catch the bus” – or so the slogan goes in York. A better time would be if the bus actually turned up.

Last Friday night we waited for 20 minutes, gave up and drove into York instead. My refreshment for the night was downgraded to one pint of unmanly shandy.

Mostly I cycle, walk or drive. I don’t mind public transport, but wonder if a company whose buses don’t turn up shouldn’t consider a name-change from First to Second.