I never realised how hard it was to be a woman – till now.

My friend ‘Shaz’ texted me recently, alerting me to the perils of belonging to the fairer gender.

“Why dont u do a blog bout how guys check out girls…the sly and not so sly! Then the f..kn leery!”

I think she’d had a dodgy experience at some downtown bar. Probably some inebriated Neanderthal with a wandering eye and inappropriate wayward hand.

I don’t think I fall into his camp. But like most men, I can’t claim to be pure as the driven snow either.

The cheeky perv: it’s an age-old ritual, predicated on base physical instincts and the lure of gorgeous eye candy. Whether it be a sneaky peeky from behind the anonymity of wrap around sunnies, the high street “sly dog” from a fella walking hand-in-hand with his missus, or the outrageously overt construction site workers’ jeering ogle, we’ve all been guilty in some shape or form.

It’s a strange beast this trying to be funny thing.

The last fortnight’s effort by The Lost Boys at writing a romantic novella in the style of Mills & Boon met with mixed reaction.

The comments ranged from “OMG hilarious” to something less enthusiastic like “Huh?” I won’t even go into the derogatory comments; there were plenty of them (which is fair enough given the ridiculous result of our “romantic” musings).

Stav - the one-time Italian playboy, drug boss and multinational children’s toy empire chief executive - surveyed the countryside and filled his lungs with good, clean, rural air.

His 2000 head of dairy cattle were grazing in the upper pastures, lambing season was under way and the Swedish kittens (now a sheep shearing gang of some reckoning) were tending to the yaks.

Once upon a time he would have Blackberried his stock broker to check how his Microsoft shares were doing on the FTSE, then ordered a hit on a meddling South American police chief who was starting to interfere with shipments.

But fatherhood had mellowed Stavros Calvador. He was a changed man.

Stavros took another pull on the cigar, coughing terribly as he inhaled the thick, cloying cloud of Cuban smoke.

He knew you weren’t supposed to waste such fine tobacco, instead drawing it softly into your mouth and rolling it around to savour the taste of a thousand Caribbean thighs and the communist tang of Castro’s lively legacy.

But he was inflicting as much self hate as he could.

He rolled his eyes, red with the effects of a continually full coffee mug of Hennessey and the Filipino dwarf carnival film he had on loop in the yacht’s gymnasium. The self loathing was showing.

Incensed by his own foolish behaviour with Rhiaynne, Stavros Calvador had withdrawn into his own melodramatic world and refused to talk to her, only tolerating the Swedes when they brought him food. Most of it he turned his nose up at.

Rhiaynne leaned forward, gripped the shining porcelain bowl and vomited her guts out into the toilet.

Acidic bile and mangled chunks of the steak and cheese pie she’d asked the cook to knock up for her tea last night came spewing forth in grotesque heavings.

She hadn’t chucked her ring like this since sculling a 40-ounce of Southern Comfort at Julz’ 21st after a marathon game of Mexi. Christ, she felt awful.

Looking out her bedroom window at the German mountain range, Rhiaynne cast her mind back to the daring raid.

Svetlana’s aim was dead on - the shot cleaned out the torture temptress Olga in a single silenced whisper. But Rhiaynne was not impressed.

She expected her imprisoned lover to be ecstatic to see her, but instead found him naked and standing to attention in a compromising position as Olga’s firm grip faded like the life ebbing from her malevolent eyes.

Days later, adrenaline still pumped through her veins as she recalled the mad dash across Europe in pursuit of the mysterious professional soldiers who violently kidnapped her Italian god of lovemaking, Stavros Calvador.

Stavros Calvador had no idea how long he had been unconscious. Maybe hours, perhaps days.

His bloodied face was swollen like Dirk Diggler’s infamous member. His left leg felt like it had been mauled by a horny German Alsatian. His masculine bush-clad chest ached painfully with each laboured breath.

He awoke, still groggy from whatever drugs they had injected him with, spread-eagled, naked and chained to a rough wood table in a darkened and grimy non-descript room.

Semi-aroused and disbelieving, Stavros slowly dried his relaxed but naturally taut torso with a pure white Egyptian cotton towel, staring at the dripping wet body of the unorthodox beauty reclining on the deck cushions.

It had been five days and he had not left the yacht.

A full moon hung low over the sultry Mediterranean, casting its ghostly shadow across the mirrored waters like a luminous search light. The inflatable dingy cut a silent path, ferrying its two beautiful strangers ever closer to the luxury launch moored half a kilometre off the Cote d’Azur.

Stavros Calvador’s powerful muscles glistened with sweat as he pulled on the oars in perfect, rhythmical strokes. His partly-unbuttoned silk shirt exposed a wild tuft of black chest hair over his heaving breast. Experience from his days as lead rower in the Oxford University coxed fours had not deserted the gifted athlete – pull … pull … pull …

The 3am text was the best thing that had happened since she arrived in France.

Initially, Rhiaynne’s heart had frozen as the only person who texted her in the middle of the night was Gav, usually drunk and wanting to have sweaty, grunty, beer-breath sex.

God, she could use some of that now.

Paris had not been the cure her heart had desperately needed since she abandoned London and Gavin after finding him in her kitchen naked and entertaining himself with the mutton roast she had been saving for her mate Razza’s hens night.

She’d loved him and had understood his lack of libido when he was sober, tolerating his whiny requests to get blotto and pretend she was a hermaphrodite.