She is in fact what she calls, in a rather old-fashioned way, a career woman; a member of the very species that she affects to despise. Now Fay Weldon has told women that they should fake orgasm to keep their men happy. "Congratulate him and pour the champagne, " says Weldon, who doesn't seem to know much about what the average bedroom contains.

Naturally all hell has broken loose . . . not, unfortunately, in the bedrooms of the world, but in the newspapers.

All adults have to compromise, and it would be a foolish person who denigrated good sexual manners, which are a much neglected aspect of bedroom life, presumably because they cannot be used to sell cars, computers and, most recently, crisps. However Weldon's advice has caused a storm of protest, the majority of it from men who are fed up of being patronised, blamed and lied to. On the Observer website one man rather cleverly pointed out that Fay Weldon has been faking her arguments for years.

Fay Weldon is a great show woman.

She is now 74. To women over 35 she is remembered as someone who wrote feminist fables . . . excellent feminist fables . . . back in the '70s. Few females under 35 have heard of her.

Like the German writer Gunter Grass, Fay Weldon was important to a whole generation of literate young people, once upon a time.

Like Gunter Grass, she has grown old. Like Gunter Grass she has a new book to sell.

Gunter Grass recently sent the German nation into shock by admitting that he was a member of Hitler's SS as a very young man, at the end of the second world war. He released the news after years of lecturing his fellow countrymen about their lack of honesty in admitting what they did under Hitler. He released the news just as his new memoir was about to hit the shelves.

No one blames Fay Weldon for trying to turn a buck, but she can be blamed for talking nonsense, particularly to younger women who are worried that no man will ever love them because they are too demanding.

In fact Fay Weldon appears to revel in controversy, delighted by public attention whatever its price. She is very much of her generation of writers in general . . . and of feminists in particular . . . who think that their progression through the stages of life, and the changing perspectives that journey brings, is riveting material for the rest of us. The Me Generation, of which Weldon is a part, was once a force for great social change. However the down side of believing that the personal is political . . . a noble slogan in itself . . . is that it can lead to unbridled narcissism. Germaine Greer, a brilliant feminist theorist, labours under delusions similar to Weldon's. To read Greer and Weldon's recent writings you would imagine that no intelligent woman had ever reached old age before.

Fay Weldon's new book is called What Makes Women Happy. It lists sex, chocolate, shopping, friends, food and family . . . ho bloody hum . . . as the things that make women happy. Weldon herself repeats the joke that most of these things last no more than 10 minutes, a remark which explains quite a bit. The conclusion of the book seems to be that only by being good can women be happy (Weldon was baptised in recent years and is now a Christian). This is a lie which is not supported either by real life or by Weldon's early fiction.

Looking round our prosperous, healthy and privileged population it would seem that women in the west have a talent . . . nay, an absolute genius . . . for making themselves miserable.

One man wrote on the Observer website that, while his sex life was not perfect and he wasn't earning enough money to be considered a good catch, he was still very glad that he wasn't a woman, and having to be neurotic on a full-time basis.

You would think that some authoritative older woman writer would tell women that they don't have to be neurotic on a full-time basis either, but after 40 years of modern feminism we're still holding our breath on that one.