BATTLE OF THE SEXES HOTS UP OVER THE THERMOSTAT

A NEW cold war has broken out in the battle of the sexes.

For a debate in the race for the governorship of New York, the actress Cynthia Nixon insisted the hall be heated to a steamy 24C (75.2F), arguing her opponent (the existing Governor Andrew Cuomo) would otherwise want it to be too cold for her.

Nixon’s adviser Rebecca Katz backed this up by declaring that working conditions in offices generally were ‘notoriously sexist’ in being fixed at temperatures which suited men more than women.

Katz has been widely mocked for this, but apparently it’s true: a study three years ago reported women are most comfortable at 24-25C, but men’s ideal is 2.5C lower.

The temperature war in our household is quite the other way around. My wife likes it much colder than I do — and I am the one complaining bitterly against her insistence that the central heating doesn’t need to be on until November. Sometimes I have to go to bed fully dressed in order to survive her edict (and it makes a point).

Actually, I had a warning of what was to come before we got married. On my first visit to her parents’ home I was astounded — dismayed, in fact — by the absence of heating on a cold winter’s night. I was told by a friend that this is what I should have expected from the English landed classes (my wife’s father had a farm in Kent).

I, by contrast, come from a long line of city dwellers, where well-heated homes have the windows firmly shut and there is no religious devotion to the merit of bracing fresh air.

I’m with you, Cynthia.