SCIENTISTS say they have discovered how to make males faithful to one partner.

At the moment, they have only managed to do this with meadow voles, but they say the principle is the same for humans.

They turned promiscuous jack-the-lad voles who like to play the field into home-loving types who choose and stay with one mate by altering one gene in their brain chemistry to boost the hormone vasopressin.

This is apparently released when humans have sex so perhaps in the future the way to a man's heart will no longer be through his stomach (as if it ever was) but through his chemical imbalance.

"Aye up, Bert. But I think I'm chemically imbalanced."

"Nay lad. Tha's 'ad too much ale."

"Same thing."

This male tendency to malfunction under the pressure of alcohol and to emotionally stray at the sight of a short skirt could be cured by using vole-technology and altering a gene in their brain.

That's all very well, a female friend said. But first you have to find a brain.

Ooh, can't women be sharp?

Maybe cerebral surgery will be unnecessary if the chemical industry does its stuff. The people who gave the world Viagra and Cialis - the longer lasting pill that the French refer to as le weekend - will undoubtedly develop simpler applications for vasopressin. A patch or aerosol or an accupuncture ear-ring. Or something a wife can slip into her husband's cocoa to guarantee another month of attention, chocolates, roses and straight home from work.

"Didn't you call for a pint, then?"

"Of course not, darling. I wanted to be with you."

"You're only after my best beef stew."

"Not true. I'm in love with your dumplings."

It's just a shame that this vole-technology has not yet been developed. If it had, it could have saved the marriage of the woman in London who has asked her husband for a divorce after 23 years of marriage because he's preoccupied with Euro 2004.

The 55-year-old lady from Plaistow has cited her husband's obsession with the football championships as the last straw.

She says she's had to put up with the West Ham fan going to every home game and to many away games over the last number of years.

Now the 56-year-old pipe-fitter has taken two weeks off work to go to the pub to watch the Euro 2004 championships with his friends.

Shocking, isn't it, how something as daft as soccer can be allowed to ruin relationships? Twenty two men chasing a ball around a field. And for what? The satisfaction of beating everybody else and putting the Germans and French in their place? Attaining national glory?

Come on England. Roo-nee, Roo-nee. It's coming home, it's coming ... football's coming home.

And keep that spray can well away from me.