Read Richard Dawkins works? (Well, some anyway.) If you are a man maybe you should reread them again, because I bet you missed the bit about how to be a “babe magnet.” This is the point at which I would traditionally feel impelled to say, “I kid you not”. So I’m saying it.

A reporter for the Times Online turned up for one of the “How to pick up women” seminars that are apparently turning unfeasible male bragging and male credulity into a profitable industry. (It’s quite an entertaining piece.)

This is about one of the keynote speakers, who goes by the nom de seduction of Gem. (I put the Dawkins bit in bold)

… he resembles a Mediterranean shipping magnate the morning after the night before. Gem expands upon his theme by drawing from Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene, one of three texts which, he says, taught him “everything I know about pick-up”. We must banish our primordial fear, he says, and realise that looks are less important for women than they might be for men. “I am clinically obese,” he continues. “Every day that I go out, I’m disproving the idea that looks are important to women.”

(Nor, if this sort of course is anything to go by, are sincerity, intelligence, or the capacity to treat women as real human beings. 🙂 )