Bad boy habit is a tough one to kick

Bad boys have a toxic appeal when you are young: they are a rite of passage, for where's the fun in dating somebody your parents approve of?

If my boyfriend hadn't been a loser, I wouldn't have the comic memory of him hiding in my wardrobe until the coast was clear.

Just as well my tastes have improved, for my wardrobe no longer has space to accommodate anything so superfluous as a man.

For some women, advancing age does not dampen their ardour for bad boys. Consider Jane Felix-Browne, who married Osama Bin Laden's son at the age of 51, divorcing him five months later because she was afraid of being murdered.

To ask her whether she should have thought of that beforehand is to miss the point: the wealthy, cosseted Felix-Browne didn't want romance, she wanted danger.

Nice girls love a bad boy. Take Sienna Miller - anyone wondering why she traded Jude Law for the gangly, strawthatched rogue that is Rhys Ifans clearly hasn't been in a room with him. If you like the thrill of wondering whether a man is going to drink himself to death, then Ifans is for you. Hard-partying Miller is allegedly besotted.

Once, a Scottish friend dated a boy so bad that we weren't allowed to know his name, much less meet him. It was a running joke at first (how dreadful could he be?) until it turned nasty. Fleeing his home after he became threatening, time was called on their relationship only after the police had been - not a good look in your late thirties.

At first, I put her dodgy choice of man down to her stable background, working on the theory that girls with nice lives are far more prone to seek nastiness than those who have been surrounded by it from birth.

But deep down at the heart of any nice, intelligent woman's relationship with a bad boy is a lack of self-esteem, a self-hatred far more damaging than their paramour's behaviour.

As Kate Moss worked the room at Annabel's last week, glowing in diamonds and good cheer, you knew that, however glamorous the soirée, she would still end up in some bloke's East End flat doing Lord knows what until the small hours. And she did. She usually does.

Bad boys might be fun, but they are also the conduits of self-destruction, never there to pick up the pieces when your need escalates beyond a level they can deal with. Pete Doherty is the perfect case in point. Apparently Kate has bagged herself a nice boy now. So has my Scottish chum. I hope they don't get bored. Sadly for those around them, a woman's yen for bad boys is as hard to kick as heroin.