Premiere Night at the Royal Albert Hall for Sir Paul McCartney’s Ecce Cor Meum tonight. I was impressed with his underappreciated Liverpool Oratorio. Lesley Brownbill was dismissive of the idea of a Ryesingers performance next year. ‘Out of his depth’ was her reaction…with ‘He didn’t write it himself anyway!’ thrown in for good measure.

Fiona wrote in the Daily Mirror on Saturday 21st October…the page was marked 2004 but the rest of the paper was 2006…about the time she met Paul McCartney. ‘He offered me a cuppa as soon as we shook hands and he talked passionately about his wife.’ ‘I love her because she interests me. Every day she does something that interests me,’ he had said when she asked about his marriage. But he was not talking about Heather Mills…but Linda Eastman.

Linda was the love of Paul’s life. He could have done with her wise counsel in the torrid weeks since he split from Heather…his second wife. Their separation and divorce proceedings become nastier by the week. Fiona again. ‘Linda was never one to talk about their relationship but it was clear that family was at the heart of everything she did. She once asked for my mum’s address after I told her mum couldn’t understand why I was vegetarian. ‘I’ll write to her,’ she said. And she did.’ The evidence suggests Heather is not like that. Her priority is Heather…and always has been.

I have known the type…and it is not good news. The type is driven by deep feelings of inadequacy which spring from low self-esteem following perceived or actual rejection by the father. A particular intriguing feature is the ability to mask true personality. Outside the intimacy of the relationship…and inside too before winning the man…this type comes across as charming and caring. But it is a pose.

Alone together with her man, low self-esteem kicks in…laced with resentment of his success and fear of her own failure and ‘being found out’. The natural behavioural outlet for the subsequent frustration is to take every opportunity to put the man down. Initially this will only happen in private. But the better the man and the bigger his success the greater the frequency. I would guess she made Paul’s life hell.

I make a point of listening to The Archers on BBC Radio Four if I am back onboard by seven in the evening. David and Ruth’s 18-year marriage is on the rocks. First David was charmed and flattered by ex-girlfriend Sophie who suddenly turns up…divorced. Sophie has the makings of my Bad News Type but the scriptwriters did not develop the character. Eventually David sees the error of his ways. But too late…perhaps…because meanwhile Ruth has fallen head over heels in love with Farmhand Sam. Which way will she jump? We are all sitting on the edge of our seats!

Perhaps Paul’s money would be better spent on the Genetic Scientist Giovanna Cominero at the University of Pavia in Italy instead of a Fleece of Barristers at the Inns of Court in London. Giovanna studied a family of four sons…who should have been women...and discovered a gene that provides the Essence of Womanhood.

I have long known that the male has two different chromosomes…an X and a Y…while the female has a double helping of one or the other. But I never managed to remember if the double helping was a Y or an X until I looked at the shape of the letter ‘Y’ and decided it looked like percy being pointed at the porcelain...with acknowledgements to Barry Humphries.

Whenever I try to wrap my head around the idea of a Genetic Revolution transforming the Human Condition I get a niggling Valves-in-the-Television feeling. Understanding a valve does not explain the pictures. Woman has this stunning ability to replicate herself…and many himselves too. The sperm-giving male has big mobility advantages over the egg-bearing female. But how much does any of this matter if we are Receivers and Transmitters?

Cast your eyes over a crowd and you will be looking at trillions upon trillions of genes. Look at the same crowd three years later and every cell, gene and chromosome you gazed upon 3-years earlier will have been replaced. We completely reproduce ourselves every few years…something that intrigues Personality and Consciousness researchers.

In this crowd there are three times as many X-chromosomes as Y-ones. Is this significant? Mendel and many generations of Fruitfly Aficionados never make predictions…they assess probabilities. Dominant and Recessive Genes, a Double Helix Structure that combines bits from one parent with bits from the other…and much else that has yet to be discovered…would seem to swamp any diversity effects imparted by one chromosome buried in the DNA.

Cominero’s team studied the case of a family of four infertile brothers and told their tale in The Journal of Nature Genetics. Gender is chiefly determined by sex chromosomes. In rare cases people with the male X-Y profile develop as women. More rarely those with the female Double-X profile become male. A gene called SRY that sits on the Y-chromosome seems to be the primary trigger of male development.

But the Italians have now shown that every woman owes her femininity to another gene…RSPO1. At least one copy of this RSPO1-gene must be present for an embryo to develop as a female…or it develops as a male…even with two X-chromosomes and no SRY-gene. Strange.

Each brother had the Double-X female profile. Each brother also had the SRY-gene in the wrong place. But each brother had a mutated version of this RSPO1-gene. ‘Poor Boy! Poor Boy!’ as I have been exclaiming all week. Sir W.S. Gilbert’s words were first heard on 13th April 1880 at the Opéra Comique. It is hard to be an Orphan Boy. But having a Double X with no SRY and a mutant RSPO1 must be the Essence of Genetic Poverty...and in Italy too.