THERE is one burning question that most women over the age of 35 discuss all the time - where on earth are all the interesting and available men?

"Interesting men are defined as someone who, when you meet him, you think that you'd like to have dinner with him and, having had dinner with him, you're glad and you'd like to see him again," explains Isabel Losada, author of the amusingly informative new book Men!

"Available men are those who are not married, not separated' (but his wife doesn't know), not in any relationship which another woman believes to be long-term and monogamous, and, I've now started adding, in the case of Italians, not having lots of girlfriends'."

Of course, many single women would walk over hot coals to find out where these men are, but unfortunately there is no easy solution, according to Isabel.

"We've all seen too many romantic American movies, but in real life it's very different," she says. "The fact is there really aren't that many of these men around, but on a positive note my book does prove to all the women who are out there wondering, What am I doing wrong, is it me?', that they're not mad or even unreasonably choosy.

"We have to be very proactive in our search. Forget looking in clubs or pubs, we need to learn to do things differently," Isabel adds.

After listening to "literally over a hundred" of her attractive, successful and financially independent single women friends regularly lament the lack of interesting and available men, Isabel says she felt compelled to find some answers.

She spent time in a wide range of exclusively male environments.

She went from a raucous building site and a leather-clad Harley-Davidson club to the pin-stripes of the London stock exchange, a fast-track plumbing course, and a male bonding' stag weekend.

"What I found, much to my alarm, was that these predominately heterosexual men were actively choosing to be in all-male environments, and mainly because they don't particularly like women's company," she says.

"I did a lot of listening to these men and I found that most women are accused, somewhat justifiably I think, of whining, complaining, being demanding and having all kinds of emotional problems, 99 per cent of which men perceive to be self-created."

She suggests that single women who are looking for interesting and available men should avoid pubs and clubs at all costs, and instead try out new, exciting and essentially different pasttimes.