Here's one to stoke the battle of the sexes in time for you-know-what on Thursday. How long, would you say, is a reasonable amount of time to spend getting ready for a night out? In fact, put it this way: why is it that a man can pack for a round-the-world trip in the amount of time it takes the average woman to get ready for a date?

As an impressionable teenager, I read a book in which the heroine, whenever a beau was arriving to collect her for a night on the tiles, would get ready - bath, make-up, hair, outfit Polaroided from every angle - and then wait in her dressing gown for the doorbell to ring. Whereupon she would wrap her hair in a towel and answer the door, saying she'd be ready in just a moment. The disbelieving young suitor would be waiting downstairs, wondering whether to delay the dinner reservations by one or two hours, when she'd reappear in all her glory just three minutes later, dazzling him with her natural, wash-and-go beauty.

With the wisdom of age I can now see that this is setting yourself up for a fall once you get to the stage where said suitor is allowed upstairs. And besides, getting ready to go out - vodka tonic in hand, Blind Date in the background - can be the best bit of an evening, the part where you tornado through your wardrobe, hating everything you try on, is no one's idea of fun.

How to slim down your turnaround time? First, remember that your Saturday night self is an idealised self: you have a mental image of how you will look in the outfit you have planned, and when what you see in the mirror isn't what you'd envisaged, it can be very confusing. So don't panic. Often, the right outfit is the first one you tried on. Maybe you just need different shoes, or different jewellery, or better underwear. Or maybe you just need a little longer to get ready. Surely you've heard of being fashionably late...