Why I will never date in this town

English men are repressed homosexuals, tight-fisted, emotionally lost and terrified of women. Hey, but you do have a

"I came to England thinking courtly love and manners were important here, but I was wrong - very wrong."

Leah is petite and pretty - the epitome of Boho style in flip-flops, tight top and skirt. She is also quick-witted, intelligent, sexually confident and, unfortunately, had a rather elevated view of English men prior to her arrival. "I had an ideal of what English men were like from watching movies. I'd always loved actors like Jeremy Irons and Ralph Fiennes - guys who seemed bright and funny, yet who also had a burning intensity - and of course Jude Law, who was devastatingly gorgeous, liked women slightly older than him and was quite willing to have about 18 children. But the men I've met here have been like Hugh Grant - foppish and stuttering."

It could, of course, be that poor Leah just isn't meeting the right men. Should she find herself in a pub in, say, Bermondsey of a Friday evening, the chances are that Hugh Grant types will be thin on the ground. "Oh I admit, it's probably just the men I happen to be meeting. I don't mix in very posh circles but the type of guys I encounter are lawyers, journalists and bankers that I meet at dinner parties. They all seem to have gone to public school and grown up in emotionally chilly households. Subsequently, they never get to even touch a woman properly until they're about 20, and some of them don't even lose their virginity till 21, which is probably why they seem so terrified of being alone with a woman. In North America, however, we start dating from the age of 14 and we're already making out at the movies and into heavy petting by then. And North American men are so much more demonstrative. They'll tell you they love you almost immediately, whereas with a Brit it's hard to tell if they even fancy you. And physically, too, they're not as cute as North American men - they don't get enough sun and they don't even seem as tall. And another thing,î she adds. "English men take baths and wear nightshirts. I mean, come on. Baths are for girls. And nightshirts?î Leah throws her hands up in horror.

It is, admittedly, a slightly outmoded view of English malehood (I don't know any man who wears anything to bed), but worse is to come - as a columnist for the Canadian Globe and Mail writing a "zeitgeisty voice of youth column", Leah has been offering slices of English life to her readers, which means that details of the ineptitude of English males have crossed the Atlantic. "It's a kind of Sex and the City column," she says, or not as the case is in this particular city.

Perhaps Leah's confidence and good looks are scaring English men away (she terrifies me, and I'm a girl). "Maybe they are scared and maybe because I expect too much from men, I could be perceived as slightly princessy. I find the whole English thing of splitting the bill at the end of a meal so weird. North American guys will always pay the bill, even if you both know he's earning less than you. I've got high standards and because I have the perfect father, men have a lot to live up to.

I think North American women are further on in the feminist cycle and have chucked out all the stuff we don't need, ie, like being offended when a guy picks up the tab. Also, here, you have a date and you have to meet up with all his friends, too, and then they just text message you afterwards."

Leah left Canada after the failure of a six-and-a-half-year relationship ("he told me he loved me all the time") and a subsequent year-long relationship, which became "really hot and heavy", and you suspect that a lot of her frustration at the English male is less to do with the men and more to do with the fact that she wants to be in another relationship. After all, aren't all American women obsessed with dragging a man up the aisle? "Well, I didn't come here looking for a husband, but this is the longest I've been without a boyfriend since I was 17."

Even an encounter Leah had with Ralph Fiennes ended in tears. "I met him at a film festival and told him he looked skinny, so he pulled up his shirt and asked me to touch his belly. I then told him he needed new clothes and he said: 'Will you take me shopping?', so I agreed, and then he asked for my phone number. I hoped he'd call but the next day was 11 September, so ..." Leah shrugs. "He was very sexy, kind of smouldering and disturbing."

It must all be a bit disappointing - five months in London and not a whiff of a decent suitor. Doesn't Leah miss the sex? "Hey," she says, "I only said I wasn't having sex with English men, not having no sex at all. There are plenty of North American bankers in London, you know."