"I'VE got you a lovely new ironing board for your birthday," my mother announced the other day.

Now I realise that, along with tea towels and oven gloves, ironing boards fall into the category of worst presents for men to give women.

They're not very exciting when they're from your mother either, except that in my case, I could not have wished for anything better.

I belong to a sizeable group of people who are unlucky enough to own a board made by Beldray. Since the company went out of business, finding a cover that fits has been an impossible task.

I have trawled the UK looking for one that fits and recently, to my amazement, came across one that did. Only it was horrible - peach, with brown flowers. "I can't live with that," I told the assistant. "It's the only one available in that size," she told me.

I was beginning to think that my life was in danger of being consumed by trivia, getting worked up about such an item, when people in Third World countries were living ten to a room in shanty towns and would give their eye teeth for an ironing board, let alone a cover.

But in carrying on the search, I unearthed an entire sub-culture of ironing board obsessives, people who will stop at nothing to find the perfect board and, more vitally, the cover.

Bring up the subject and it sparks a debate more animated than anything on Question Time. People get very emotional when discussing ironing boards.

I mentioned my problem while standing at the school gates. At least a dozen women nodded - either they didn't have a cover to fit or the design was unsuitable. "It's impossible," said one, "I can't find one for love nor money."

"I've given up, I use a towel on the floor," said another. Others came forward with disturbing tales of wonky boards, low boards, squeaky boards, covers that are impossible to fasten on, and covers that pop off.

At work last week, I asked a colleague whether I was taking it all too seriously. "No you're not," she said. "I've just bought one and took ages deciding on a design. It was a really hard decision, but it had to be just right for my house."

She went on the tell me about her friend's £100 ironing board, shaped like a man (the "iron man"), with a head, body and legs.

Fascinated, I checked out a few websites and discovered a whole world of boards and covers, hundreds of them, some with bikini-clad female celebrities for "male ironing fun" (can anyone enlighten me on the definition of "male ironing fun"), and men with towels draped over their privates, presumably for female ironing amusement. Some even featured models in swimwear wear that disappears under the heat of the iron. There were even websites for that rare species, the Beldray cover.

It did not take long for our office chat to explode into an all-out debate about different covers, with one manager describing the joys of his "softly padded but firm" cover. Other men joined in, with details of their covers, and of their ironing prowess. Some, I suspect, had even dabbled with extreme ironing, lugging their boards up the Cow and Calf rocks.

Having entered this intriguing world, I'm almost sad to have a new ironing board. Luckily, my clothes prop has broken. I hope to come across a similar network of fanatics as I hunt for a new one.