The Ukip treasurer Stuart Wheeler’s recent comments about women being less good than men at bridge (and chess, and poker) were met with predictable outrage. But I’m afraid he was right: at the very top, women do trail behind men.

Of course, there are exceptions (Sabine Auken, for instance, recently won the European open pairs); but in a list of the world’s top 500 players, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of women.