Isn’t science wonderful? Research scientists – by name David Buss, Cari Goetz, et al – inform us in a paper that women are programmed by evolution to be sexually unfaithful to their mate, as a “back-up” marriage plan.

The boffins say that females have always been aware that they might break up with one partner – so just as well to have another in the pipeline, as a spare. They call this “the mate-switching hypothesis”, which, let’s be honest, is just a fancy name for adultery.

This is hardly a new discovery. “Cheating”, as the Americans so disparagingly call it, is as old as the hills.