Is anything more pitiful than watching men wait patiently outside department store dressing rooms for their girlfriends to emerge, chrysalis-like, from last season’s clothes into this season’s must-have wardrobe?

In a word, no.

It’s the crestfallen look on his face that says it all: ‘My forebears used to hunt, skin wild animals and light fires with their bare hands... and look at me now!’ Well yes, if you grimace like that everybody WILL look, so the best thing you can do is learn to love the experience or fear the next few Saturdays in the run-up to Christmas, because don’t think that age, PMT or water retentive ankles will in any way diminish your wife or girlfriend’s craving for retail therapy.

It may in fact even boost it, because as experience with women has taught me (and every other man who ever lived), all they ever want to do is shop. Regardless.

The point is, shopping with any woman aged between 25 and 50 CAN be a great deal of fun – you just have to work at it. And there are several good reasons why.

1. You’ll earn ‘Brownie’ points. And we, as men, all know what that means...

After all, ask yourself this: how many times have you heard female colleagues at work bitterly lamenting the fact that, if only they could find a man who liked shopping, they’d do anything for him?

2. There are always the shop assistants to eye up.

And for some reason or other, they always feel more comfortable to chat if your girlfriend/wife is present.

Since said other-half is usually only present in ‘spirit’ (her physical self being hidden behind cheap curtains as she attempts to squeeze, for the umpteenth time, into a size 10 when everyone knows she’s a size 16), this can prove very rewarding.

3. You can chat to other men and share ‘war’ stories about having lost entire afternoons in M&S.

And what a relief that’ll prove – off-loading about the frustrations of being little more than a ‘bag man’ in a society increasingly fixated on ‘six packs’, male ‘performance’, and capped teeth.

4. Remind yourself that if you weren’t waiting for your partner to parade her latest accessory triumphantly in front of you, you’d doubtless be at her parents instead!

5. And last but not least, just think of the excuse it provides for you to find fault with her? (and what could be more rewarding than that?).

First of all, you can harp on about her profligacy and extravagance (true, an old chestnut, but one which never fails to produce the required effect – remorse, guilt and a desire to atone for those retail sins).

Secondly, it allows you the opportunity to ‘spend’ (and yes, use that very word, as it has such obvious connotations) Sunday mornings playing footie, drinking beers afterwards, safe in the knowledge that no matter what she says, morally you own the ‘high ground’.

Keep this easy-to-use guide, and there’s no reason why future expeditions to Bicester Village and Oxford’s Cornmarket will be anything other than a walk in the mall.