Why being on TV makes them sexy

I’VE OFTEN been asked what underpins my attraction to Simon Cowell — bad taste in men, a potential styling project, weird Machiavellian fetish.

Despite having heartily denied these accusations, I continue to falter at the suggestion of power. It’s true. Prime time has become a sexual surrogate for action heroes, politicians and leading men with the most unlikely faces raising our pulses with their profiles.

Perhaps it’s the intimacy of television — right there in our sitting rooms; or its 2.0 ubiquity — on smartphones, on laptops, on demand; but without a doubt, television has the uncanny ability of making men more attractive. Or does it?