I like to live life dangerously. Wild stuff like living by myself, being single and staying in watching Ealing comedies on DVD. If I keep up this kind of behaviour into my 50s, it will double my risk of heart disease, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reported last week. I already knew not getting married was more dangerous than smoking, while Richard Layard has been reminding me in his book Happiness that not marrying is likely to make me more miserable than those who wed (but don't divorce).

If all that wasn't bad enough, I'm also a social problem. Having a whole flat to myself means I take up too much room in our overcrowded island and my atomised existence is indirectly responsible for social breakdown and crime, as I'm contributing to the weakening of community cohesion. Pleasing yourself (not like that) has never been so socially and morally unacceptable.

The only trouble is that none of this evidence shows that being single is bad for you. People who live alone simply tend to expose themselves to more health risks than those who do not. Single people are more likely to eat badly and smoke, and that is what kills them. That is why comparing solo living with smoking as a risk factor just does not make sense. Smoking damages your body directly; living alone is in itself harmless.

In general, it is true that people are happier if they have strong family and social networks. But this does not depend on how many people you share your home with. Miserable couples who just stay in and watch TV are less socially connected than live-alones who go out every night. Furthermore, there are many who actually prefer relative solitude, so it is not inevitable that being a loner will make you less happy and healthy. As for our environmental impact, a two-car couple in a large house use up more resources than I do, especially if they have kids they refuse to keep in tree houses and rear as semi-feral hunter-gatherers.

As long as I eat well, exercise, am not wasteful and get as much social contact as I need, being single is not only perfectly safe, it is better for me than growing fat and old with a wife, social circle and family who all drive me up the wall. And if anyone has studied the effects of being a bitter cynic on life expectancy, they can sod off too.