Somewhere in the East Midlands there's a village where the dinner plates are crusty, the bins are brimming with pizza boxes, and the washing's gone a funny shade of pink.

The fridges are packed with lager but there's no milk for tea. The bedroom curtains are closed all day, and the toilet seats stay resolutely up.

In the living-room, sports bags spill their toxic cargo of mud-caked football boots and mouldering bath towels, and any remaining floor space is littered with wires and battery chargers.

Sofa covers and cushions are wrinkled to within an inch of their lives, and on the coffee table lies a neat row of remote controls. There are no clean socks anywhere.

There are some funny folk in Nottinghamshire, but this oddity is not a quaint and quirky custom. Nor is it the result of a British pilot study into that infamous Spanish legislation designed to force men into doing the housework.

Instead, the community of Harby has been divested of all its women in the name of a TV experiment.

The BBC, seeing Harby as a typical English village, has sent its entire adult female population off on a week's holiday to see how the men cope when left home alone for yet another reality show called Women Left. It claims it wants to see if the men come up with new and better ways to tackle the housework; but you and I know, sister, that the real point is to demonstrate just how ghastly they are when our backs are turned.

The trouble is, in my experience, most men are really not all that bad. In fact, when I come back from a trip away, I find the house pretty much clean and tidy.

But you don't know what's been going on before the morning of your return, do you? At least, not until you open your clothes drawers to find the wreckage of your once-proud wardrobe. Naturally, things are entirely different at my house when the Other Half (OH) is away for a week or so, and I'm the one left holding the fort.

I grant you, I may occasionally slob out watching wall-to-wall Judge Judy instead of improving my mind with a nice nature programme. I may openly ogle Colin Firth on my borrowed copy of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, instead of pretending he's a bit too thin for my taste.

I may sleep on the other side of the bed, just to see what it's like, and I might make myself a catering-sized cauldron of spag bol to slake my carnivorous blood-lust while the veggie is out of the country.

But who was it that almost electrocuted herself and lacerated the Flymo cable by running over it while trying to mow the lawn? Not me, honest.

Nor was I the one who spent days shivering in an ice house because I couldn't suss out the central heating system. I could never be so stupid as to disable the PC while trying to upload music to an MP3 player. A big boy must have done it and run away. Probably right after he tried and failed to master the video recorder for that programme that the OH wanted to be taped.

Yes, there's a lot that you learn about yourself and your relationship when you're left home alone.

But it's mainly how running your lives is much more of a team effort than you think in your grumpier moments.

Updated: 09:45 Wednesday, April 13, 2005