WOMEN are experts in the art of making pointless phone calls. It is not easy.

It takes years of practice, which is why we usually start at about the age of 13, honing our craft gradually by calling our girl friends every hour on the hour for no reason whatsoever.

Maybe it's a hormonal thing, but whatever the reason it is something we are preternaturally talented at. We can phone a friend with nothing to say and still be not saying it an hour later.

The other night, however, I came across a rather disturbing development. Men are starting to make pointless phone calls too. It began with an answerphone message from my eldest brother-in-law. He spent five precious minutes of his life telling us he was just phoning to say "hi", that he was in a cab on his way home from work and that he was on his mobile (no, really?).

Now, he has been known to have the odd drink or 12 while supposedly handling multi-million pound deals in his role as a high-flying city banker. In fact, he is usually so high-flying by the end of the day that he needs weights on his ankles so he can stagger down the office stairs and into a waiting cab.

But on this occasion he sounded sober as a judge. He may even have been wearing a wig and carrying a gavel - you know what these London types are like. So this wasn't one of his usual drunken "hhhelloo, I'm a bit drunk" phone calls. He had actually thought it through logically and, with more than a little intellectual reasoning, even though he had absolutely nothing to tell us, he still made the call.

This wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been so closely followed by another call from another brother-in-law. My other half disappeared with the phone for 45 minutes, missing an entire episode of CSI (Crime Scene Investigation for those of you lucky enough not to be able to get Five on your telly) which I then had to act out word for word, blood splatter for blood splatter until his gore fix was satiated.

When I had finished pretending to be a man pretending to be a raccoon which another man had shot in the back because he thought it was a coyote (honestly, it made sense when watched with a bottle of chardonnay), I inquired about the phone call.

"So, what did he have to say for himself," I asked, not unreasonably. "Nothing really," came the reply. "Anything interesting happening at work?" "Nope." "Have they settled into the flat OK?" "Suppose so." "Don't you know?" "Didn't ask." "So, what did he phone for?" "No idea."

I know it's nice to keep in contact with your family when you are scattered round the country, and it's great to know there is always someone at the end of a phone line ready for a 45-minute chat about absolutely nothing. But where will it all end?

I worry that when my kids grow up and get their own phones - a day that I'm going to put off until they drag me kicking and screaming into Carphone Warehouse - that they will spend their entire lives with the wretched handsets glued to their ears.

They will of course have absolutely nothing to talk about because their every waking moment will be spent on the phone while life passes them by. "Whatcha doin'," they will ask their friends, while watching them doing nothing on the miniature screen in their hand. "Nothin'," will be the predictable reply. "Whatchu doin'." And so on until one of them drifts into a boredom-induced coma.

If anyone has an ingenious solution to this pointless phone call spiral of doom, I would love to hear it. Answers on a postcard please to the usual address - and don't forget your phone number.

Updated: 10:10 Monday, March 01, 2004