Catherine Scott: Men at work – but a red card for Phil Neville

I think I am pretty lucky with my husband on the whole. He does his share of the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping – he even does his own ironing (mine isn’t good enough, apparently).

I have to say while I do appreciate his help, I didn’t see it as anything particularly out of the ordinary. We both work and so in my opinion we both have to share the household chores. However it appears he is something out of the ordinary.

A survey found that women do twice as much housework as men – even when they have done a full day in the office.

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Putting the bins out, DIY and changing light bulbs are the only three household tasks for which men take primary responsibility. I would add shoe polishing and cleaning the fish tank to that list. By contrast, 36 other chores – including vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, washing and ironing – are done by women all or most of the time.

The findings come from a survey by Mumsnet, which questioned nearly 1,000 working mothers on the division of labour in their home. It found that women spend an average 10 hours per week on household tasks, while men spend only five.

However in the Neville household it is far, far less than this. According to his wife, the former England footballer Phil Neville has failed to tackle a single piece of housework during his 15-year marriage – not sure mine would have lasted that long in that case.

Apparently the sportsman-turned-pundit has no idea where the ironing board is kept and would not know how to turn on the oven.

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Making a cup of coffee, it seems, was a new experience for the 37-year-old, who had to call his wife for instructions. Is there anything other than kicking a ball around that he does know how to do? His long-suffering wife seems to endorse this. “All his talent is in his toes, that’s for certain,” Julie Neville is quoted as saying, adding that she didn’t really mind as she was “super-domestic” and Neville was an “amazing father and husband”. So long as it doesn’t come to feeding the children, making them a drink or ironing their football kits. It could also be that Mrs Neville, who also runs her own online sport-performance and gluten-free products firm, thinks her husband would make a hash of the chores if he did deign to find where the duster and polish was kept. And she isn’t alone. Two-thirds of women surveyed said they did not want their partner to do more, because they believed men would not perform tasks “to the requisite standards”

The revelations haven’t done anything to dispel the myth that footballers aren’t the sharpest tools in the box.

They need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Twitter@ypcscott

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