This outdoor sex business is amazing.

I'm not saying I have tried it. Our garden is far too rambling - I would never find my wife in it and she would end up being ravished by the Japanese sniper who is hiding in there unaware that the Second World War has ended.

Besides we would not want to frighten the blue tits or the people on the top deck of the 405 bus.

My excellent fellow columnist Helen Mead started it when she wrote about her aversion to outdoor hanky panky. Then followed a flurry of readers' letters in praise of the joys of al fresco sex, including one from a lady in her 70s who still likes making love in the garden and in the garden shed.

I take great exception to this. Not that they're still at it at their age and are keeping it fresh with imaginative positions, sorry locations. Good luck to them.

What upset me was that they do it in his shed. Good God, man! Don't you know the hallowed shed is the last bastion of male retreat?

We can no longer call working men's clubs our own, which is probably why so many are shutting down to make way for redevelopment.

There are not enough gentlemen left to keep gentlemen's clubs going, and talking about clubs, women are even beating us on the golf (Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden) course.

By Gad, sir. We'll be having a woman prime minister next.

Remember that expression Male Chauvinist Pig? You don't hear it any more because we have finally been cowed by the stronger sex.

Men have lost their battle for superiority, even for equality, and now the only option is wimpish retreat.

But the hordes of warrior women are determined to hunt us down to the last man and destroy our defensive positions, just like American forces blowing up the caves of Afghanistan.

One by one, our male-only rights have been stripped from our sickly torsoes until now, the only way for women to have equal rights is to give up a few.

I mean, how many men do you see storming the pink, petticoat portals of the Women's Institute? Do they allow male members? Especially when the lasses are all prancing around naked planning their next calendar.

Actually, I have been behind their closed doors, as a guest speaker. The supper is always divine, far better fare than they dish up for their husbands.

That's because they are all in ferocious competition with each other.

So what has man left if not his humble shed? They used to be potting sheds. Now they're pottering sheds, where the emasculated male can be secure in his seclusion.

It's not that we don't love you, ladies. But there are times when a man's got to do what a boy's got to do - play with his toys.

It could be a full range of totally unnecessary electric tools, or a wall board marked out with the shape of the particular tool that should hang there like the chalked outline of a body at a crime scene.

He may be carving walking sticks, painting toy soldiers or assembling model aircraft.

Who cares? What he is really doing is luxuriating in splendid isolation. He's safe from his dominatrix, but dreading the bestockinged leg curling round the shed door, followed by a come-hither finger signalling another exhausting demand for outdoor sex.

So please, lads, let's stick together. It's our only chance for the survival of the species.

Don't let them into your sheds until some woman takes us to court to demand entry and a woman judge rules in her favour.

My shed is my garage (well who keeps their car in a garage these days?) is my castle. It's got a nice little music system, comfortable chair, hearth rug and heater.

There's a lock on the inside and plenty of liquid provisions in case it accidentally sticks. And, of course, there's a WI calendar hanging above the workbench.

What do you do in yours?

Updated: 11:14 Tuesday, May 27, 2003