“What,” Mrs Merton famously asked of Debbie McGee, “first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”

Everyone got the joke by the talk show host, played by the late comedian Caroline Aherne. But would it have made sense had the sexes been reversed, and a wealthy female magician was married to the young man she regularly sawed in half? A study suggests not.

Researchers have found that while women are far more likely to find wealthy men attractive, the same is not true the other way round.

From Jane Austen’s thoughts on single men in possession of large fortunes, to the impressive preponderance of former beauty queens who wed billionaires (or billionaire presidents), there is a pattern in the marriage market that seems to repeat