Rowan Pelling: Men in gangs - they're so sweet

If netball was a global obsession and Germany was currently hosting the sport's premier tournament and all eyes were trained on the English team's HABs (husbands and boyfriends), I wonder how the men folk would rub along. I doubt for starters they would instantly divide into sub-groups and pitch their various affiliations on such flimsy turf as a fondness for Chanel accessories, pear bellinis or early-morning aerobics. I doubt the alpha male of the pack would advertise his status by dining at a separate table from the main group. Nor would he be as divisive as only ever to invite one other member of the group to join him. Nor would he wait in his hotel room until everyone else had boarded a bus to view the first game before prancing out to ensure his outfit made maximum impact. (Oh, Mrs Beckham, the games you play beat those on the pitch any day.)

Men who are suddenly pitched into an unfamiliar group of males tend to be good at finding common ground. At this very moment, millions of men worldwide are bonding with strangers as though they were sworn blood brothers over nothing more than the footie and some beers.

Men are defined by their obsessions and hobbies and their friendships evolve from these shared interests. I have known men be best mates for 40 years because in 1967 they both owned up to a passion for a band called Traffic (one of those men may well live in my house). Put two male strangers on adjacent bar stools and within minutes they will have found some mutually involving topic, whether it be cricket, model trains or the writings of Herodotus.

Men who are born pack animals even tend to be well disposed to those males of a more solitary disposition, respecting them for the taciturn loner status that spawned a thousand Westerns and grumpy fictional detectives. This instinct to cohere explains why in forums as different as Parliament or the TV show The Apprentice, radically different males will find it easier than female colleagues to present a united front and show of geniality.

When you put a random group of women together, an entirely different instinct will emerge. They will immediately seek to fracture into splinter groups. The instinct to buddy up will be exclusive, rather than inclusive. Just look at the way Victoria Beckham cherry picked Cheryl Tweedy, who has also won renown in a girl band, as the only sociably acceptable pal from the WAGs - thus delivering a whopping snub to Peter Crouch's girlfriend Abigail Clancy, who has let her own singing ambitions be known. Meanwhile Scousers Coleen McLoughlin and Alex Curran have teamed up to lead their own subset of fun-loving, spendaholic party animals. And poor Nancy Dell'Olio has, by the looks of things, been forced to forge a lonely furrow on the grounds, one suspects, of attributes entirely alien to her callow travelling companions: age and intellect.

It's hard not to be reminded of the isolation of the barking Jo on The Apprentice (who was also some years older than her colleagues on the show), and the power-broking alliance of blonde but distinctly mealy-mouthed Sharon and Michelle. Even in the BBC's new reality TV show The Convent, where four women are specifically set the task of learning the benefits of community, two renegade members had split off to enjoy a private natter (while one enjoyed a crafty fag) before the audience could shout, "They're behind the bike sheds!" By ostentatiously proving their bad-girl credentials, they also sneakily implied the other women were dreary, conformist goody-two-shoes.

Why does this kind of social devolution happen so rapidly within groups of women? I suspect it's because female friendship doesn't tend to spring from shared interests so much as being an all-absorbing interest in itself. When I look at my own circle of girlfriends, mutual passions play a far smaller role than what I would define as a mutual sensibility.

From junior school onwards, you learn to thrust yourself as soon as possible into the most appealing-looking clique, or run the risk of social ostracism. You quickly learn: by your friends you will be judged. Although there are few judgements so severe as that served upon women who have no pals at all. Instead such women are usually regarded as highly suspect figures and in past centuries were often denounced as witches.

Second only to the friendless female's leper status comes the infamous "man's woman". The opprobrium served on this figure usually springs from her proud announcement that "I just get on much better with men".

The fact that the complex code of friendship is so integral to the very state of being female means you'll experience utter hell if you forge the wrong allegiance. Few things are as tortuous as realising you've leapt headfirst into an unsustainable camaraderie and will have to begin the protracted and hazardous process of extracting yourself from your former best buddies. Women are notoriously unforgiving about such indelicate manoeuvring. That's why I feel sympathy for Cheryl Tweedy. How could she resist the flattery of being the only WAG invited to sup at Queen Posh's table? But will the sophisticated pleasures of solo dining and early bedtime maintain their lure as the days pass? Or will Tweedy find herself casting an envious eye at Coleen and her pals as they down their bellinis and set off for yet another riotous night on the town? I think I know whose gang I'd rather be in.

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