By KATE MULVEY

Last updated at 08:27 23 August 2007

Model Sophie Dahl was lately snapped with her much shorter boyfriend, jazz singer Jamie Cullum. Eight inches taller than her diminutive lover, Miss Dahl looked positively Amazonian.

Should we feel sorry for the Big Friendly Girlfriend (BFG) - a woman who will never know what it feels like to walk down the street nestling in the crook of her boyfriend's arm? Or who always has to bend her knees if her man goes for an impromptu kiss?

Scroll down for more...

Not a bit, and I should know. I am a 5ft 10inch tall woman and I have spent the past two decades stepping out with the vertically-challenged male. And I love it.

It may seem strange. There is no shortage of surveys telling us how the tall, athletic male makes a better lover, earns more and rises up the social ladder faster.

But shorter men do have advantages. They tend to be funnier, as, since their teenage years, they will have been trying to distract girls from their height.

I remember one shorter boyfriend, whose dog was almost taller than him - but he could always laugh me into bed and joke me out of a sulk.

Tall men are also more likely to be cads - they know it doesn't matter if they treat women badly because there will always be another queueing up behind.

Scroll down for more...

The few times I have gone out with a man my height or taller, he was charming at the beginning - tall men are more superficially confident. But I soon realised he was in love with only one person - and that was himself.

The vertically-challenged male represents a more complex idea of what it means to be a man. Having remained single longer, he is likely to be more mature.

As short men have had to work harder to get where they are - surveys show that society tends to favour taller men - they are likely to be better providers, too.

When we were hunter-gatherers, a man's physical attributes mattered. The taller the man, the more likely he was to bring home the bacon. But, today, prowess is measured by financial kudos.

And when it comes to making money, the short man is more ambitious. Many successful men are short: Rod Stewart, Salman Rushdie, Bernie Ecclestone.

And short men love tall women. The (SMTW) syndrome - short male taller woman - has long been in vogue: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes; or Mick Jagger, who dated Sophie Dahl, married the leggy Jerry Hall, and is now with the towering L'Wren Scott.

For short men, tall women have the very thing they have coveted all their life: height.

On the other hand, tall men can be clumsy. They have to crouch to get through doorways and they never fit on your sofa. The shorter male has compact sex appeal: Robert De Niro, James Dean.

Yet, for the less famous, there is a more basic reason why being with a short man is so satisfying: they're simply more grateful.