A recent Times article was pointed out to me, with the simple question about it: True?

Is your man forever peppering conversations with random facts, like ‘mercury is the only metal that’s liquid at room temperature’ or ‘Carlsberg Special Brew was invented for Winston Churchill’? If so, don’t worry: lots of men are addicted to useless information – and it’s not really their fault. Mark Mason, author of a new book on the subject, explains why the male brain has such a huge fascination with tiny facts.

I’m quite confused by the whole thing: useless information, what is this? Sure there’s no such thing, there’s just inappropriately timed information…

The article then goes on to list seven reasons why males like trivia. And only gets round to the real reason once you get to the seventh: It satisfies their curiosity, kind of. Of course it does; it’s information, it’s knowledge, it’s learning and it’s always better to have more of that than less.

Of course, there is a real question that could be asked in relation to it: why do we constantly bore the women around us with trivia? And that two is simple: because it’s remarkably difficult to put your foot in your mouth while reciting trivia, and we need all the safe ground we can get when treading around women…