Of course men and women can be friends,’ says Anna.

‘No question,’ Eden agrees.

‘Men make the best friends,’ Jenny stresses.

‘They don’t judge,’ Alice points out.

‘Or bitch,’ Eden again.

‘Or have an agenda when you ask for clothing advice,’ I offer.
With a jarring combination of ‘yesses’, ‘exactlys’ and a single ‘so true’, all five women around the pub table celebrate this niche fact. It’s a sunny Saturday; a long, lazy girls’ lunch. But an awkward silence follows, and I think I know why.

Celia with her friend Dylan Jones, editor of the Evening Standard

‘I’m not actually sure I have many male friends.’ Jenny’s the first to come out with it. ‘Not really.’

‘I don’t have any,’ admits Eden.

‘Not one.’

The floodgates open and suddenly I’m realising that even I, who used to pride myself on having more male friends than female, don’t see them half as much as I used to. Earlier this year I also found myself uncharacteristically flummoxed when I realised that a man I kept meeting socially and desperately wanted to be my new gay best friend wasn’t, in fact, gay – so perhaps a little too much to ask of him. I’d already got his number by this point, still look at it sometimes, finger hovering over the ‘message’ button. But five months on, I haven’t contacted him. Why?

I’d be willing to bet that if you surveyed a whole swathe of British women, you’d find that male friends just aren’t really… a Thing. Not being a betting woman, however, I contacted the authority on friendship for some statistics: world-renowned psychologist Robin Dunbar, author of Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships. He confirms that when it comes to British women’s best friends forever, ‘85 per cent are female and only 15 per cent male, but these are usually either gay men or men at the feminised end of the male distribution, ie they are good listeners and not too domineering.’

And how weird, how wrong, is that? Where are all our domineering straight male friends who never let us finish an anecdote?

In the month since that Saturday lunchtime epiphany occurred (we’ll call it a ‘pub-piphany’ because those are a Thing), I’ve conducted my own investigation into this overlooked and under-discussed cultural blind spot. What I’ve discovered has been surprising, amusing and occasionally downright sad. Most alarming has been the initial debate over what counts as a male friend, with conversations generally following these lines. ‘Male friends? Sure, I’ve got loads. What do you mean brothers-in-law don’t count? What about my husband’s friends? The guy who sits across from me at work? He sometimes invites me to the pub with the rest of the team – if it’s someone’s birthday.’