Do men and women listen to music differently?

That's what I've been pondering ever since Lesley Douglas, co-ordinator of the BBC's popular music coverage, said that - and I paraphrase - women listen to weepy Norah Jones and think about kittens, while men are busy analysing Keith Moon's drum solo in I Can See For Miles.

This may be true to an extent - I'll confess that I can no longer listen to the Beach Boys' God Only Knows because of what (or rather who) it reminds me of, which I genuinely consider to be a real loss to my life - but similarly there are tempo changes in Tom Waits' Mr Siegal that absolutely fascinate me.

Other than suggesting that I should get out more, does this make me some sort of musical hermaphrodite?

And why do some of the manliest men I know go a bit gooey eyed at the first note of Dusty Springfield's Son Of A Preacher Man?

To say that men and women listen to music differently is to reinforce one of the oldest, and most patronising, stereotypes of all time - that of men as brains and women as beauty.

Both sexes are far more complex than that, and I would expect men to be every bit as offended as women by the suggestion that their musical listening habits can be so easily categorised.

Lesley Douglas has completely ignored the fact that most people listen to a wide range of music depending on their mood, their surroundings and who they've been talking to recently. Many of the songs I hear have been recommended to me by male friends - but do I get less pleasure from hearing them? I doubt it.

I find it worrying that someone with such a limited and simplistic grasp of the tastes of both men and women is in charge of feeding the musical brains of the country. If we end up with a generation of girls who believe that Westlife are the greatest thing to have happened to a record player, we'll know who to blame.