Sylvia Patterson on shortcomings

The other month, when Gwyneth Paltrow was teetering around Europe promoting a film and bewitching a continent with her seven-inch heels below seven-foot bare legs, a male chum was moved to wonder the following: "What does Gwyneth Paltrow see in Chris Martin? She's gorgeous, smart, funny and he's a neurotic geek. What's going on there?"

This month, a timely psychological study endeavours to bring us the answer, in the report from the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology called Dissing Oneself: The Sexual Attractiveness of Self-Deprecating Humour. The study, conducted by anthropologist Gil Greengross over two years, claims the personality trait of doing yourself down is man's best-ever gambit for toppling a woman into bed, and cites the perpetual bumblings of Hugh Grant in Notting Hill as a particularly fine example.

"Many studies show a sense of humour is sexually attractive, especially to women", avers the boffin, none too enlighteningly so far. "But we've found that self-deprecating humour is the most attractive of all. It is a risky form of humour because it can draw attention to one's real faults, but based on the idea that verbal humour evolved to function as a fitness indicator, self'deprecating humour can be an especially reliable indicator, not only of general intelligence and verbal creativity, but also moral virtues such as humility."

This year the nation's music journalists have been ruminating on the re-emergence of Chris Martin, and while there's never any blanket consensus on the merits or otherwise of Coldplay's music, we're unanimously agreed that Chris Martin is the most self-deprecating frontman in the history of rockn'roll, which would make him, you would then conclude, the most attractive rockn'roll star in the world today and not only, perhaps, to the clearly besotted Gwyneth.

This week's column, therefore, serves as both litmus test and self-help guide, for women to supposedly swoon over and men to presumably learn from as we ponder some recent examples of the fabled Martin quip, all of which end with an enormous, goofy, comically gap-toothed grin.

Chris Martin, on constantly dreaming about other musicians: "I dreamt about Radiohead last night and Westlife the night before, which I think is the perfect blend of what we're trying to do musically."

On working with Brian Eno: "It's nice to work with someone next to whom you feel absolutely talentless."

On why they're happy to stay signed to EMI and not release their own records as Radiohead have done: "We still can't believe we got signed. We're still thrilled! We don't wanna be unsigned yet."

On the Channel 4 documentary Young At Heart, in which a group of rock-singing pensioners covered Coldplay's Fix You from their X&Y album, which featured lead vocals from a dying man on a ventilator: "I heard about it, but I can't comment on that album because it's too close, so I can't really listen to that song. I couldn't watch it because I can't listen to our music, which ranks me the same as millions of other people."

On driving ambition: "You've got to be hungry. If your wife went out with Brad Pitt, you'd want to prove yourself, d'you know what I mean?"

On contributing guest vocals to US hip'hop titan Kanye West's Homecoming song, during which West continually grabs at his crotch: "I'd love to be a crotch grabber, but I can never find it."

And so on, to infinity. No wonder, in Coldplay's recording studio, Martin has affixed a framed black and white photograph of a quizzical Woody Allen.

Chris Martin knows, as he says himself, the art of self-deprecation is mostly "a British thing; I feel the same way about my band as Bono does about his, but I just can't say it".

Our curious national characteristic is, if anything, becoming ever more acute. Even the seemingly swaggering Russell Brand is actually always saying, "I am deeply, pathologically flawed" and asking who wants to have sex with him (Clue: everyone).

A habitually self-deprecating male chum muses on the phenomenon: "I think it's a unifying thing. I'd be much more embarrassed to come across as pompous than a bit useless, because I am a bit useless - and so is everyone else. And women probably like it because you're offering safety, you're being non-threatening, which makes me sound like Chesney Hawkes on the cover of a teenage magazine in 1991."

It's also a way, of course, of protecting yourself, of heading critics off at the pass, of championing the underdog (especially if it's you) and of lowering expectations so the only way is up. And the Scots, if anything, are better at it than anyone, as Billy Connolly has consistently shown us for the last 30 years, becoming The Funniest Man Alive by sending himself either up or down, and taking his countrymen with him. For example: "The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll look exactly the same afterwards."

History notes, of course, that Billy Connolly is also married to a smart, funny and intoxicatingly beautiful woman. And if our boffin is to be believed, here's a thought for the day: the Scottish man must officially be the most sexually attractive male of the species on the face of the Earth today. (Which would be good news, at last, for Gordon Brown were he in any way self'deprecating enough...)