In order to find out why more women do laundry than men, we sought out the insight of personal hygiene specialist Reseda Riekes, who explains that “what we have here is a basic self-perpetuating cycle”.

Like a white person who unhelpfully claims that they “don’t see colour”, many men simply don’t see the food stains, sweat patches and creases in their clothes.

“This ‘dirt-blindness’ often seems to go hand-in-hand with an inability to recognise the smell of body odour and damp,” says Riekes, “although research is still pending into why this might be.”

Women, in contrast, do notice these things – and if they live with a male partner, they’d rather just shove his grotty clothes into the washing machine than go out in public with someone who’s been wearing the same Radiohead t-shirt for 13 days in a row.

Consequently, a large minority of married men believe that fresh clothes simply ‘appear’ on the chair in their bedroom. When asked if he believes laundry is a “boy job” or a “girl job”, 39-year-old engineer Paul Runcorn replied: “Nice try, feminazi. It’s no one’s job. It just happens.”

Professor Angela Demeter, head of the Centre for Mythology Studies at King’s College London, describes the legend of the “laundry fairy” as a “classic example of how new folklore can take hold in modern times”.

Important notice: all of the experts cited in the above article are fictional. There is no such thing as a boy job and a girl job when it comes to household chores. If you really want to know how to divide up the housework, try asking the question “Is this fair?” rather than “What gender am I?”

Why the bins and the fuses should always be a man’s job, according to the ‘experts’