I am, like many men, a man suffering from loneliness, lost in the stomach of this blind city. Most of us feel this way, but very few are willing to admit it. Let me begin with a broad statement: I’ll say, then, that loneliness in London is the organic by-product of ambition. 95 per cent of men who come to the city to pursue a high-flying career are going to experience the acute symptoms of solitude within three years of their arrival. Of that 95 per cent, 50 per cent will settle for an OK job, a shit flatshare and a boring string of dates. They will begin to believe that the loneliness and frustration they experience every day is a given in life and never ask any questions. Fine: the human being is endlessly adaptable. 45 per cent will push themselves to their very limits in order to overcome loneliness. A third will go crazy, a third will succeed, a third will move away. The remaining 5 per cent are the kind of sociopaths who manage London’s biggest firms. Mind you, I say all this with my tongue stuck firmly in my cheek: I know full well it’s a bad idea not to crosscheck one’s data, and I haven’t been able to verify these percentages through a series of rigorous interviews, but trust me, had I attempted to, I would’ve had trouble squeezing the slightest hint of insecurity out of most men. I would’ve likely drawn a blank. Insecurity: that’s really the problem for most of us. Whether us men like it, or not. I guess it doesn’t rate so highly in compatibility charts on websites like this one. As a desirable trait, confidence is up there with height (a piece of crucial information I can give you is this: I am over six foot tall). I’m sure the proportion is more or less exact: what draws men like us to the city is what eventually undoes us, rots us to the core, transforms most of us into those tie-wearing, briefcase-wielding, dick-swinging twats you see filling up Farringdon pubs.