So now it turns out, it is not all in the genes after all. New research carried out at Harvard University into what people find attractive has revealed that it has less to do with hard-wired genetic preferences than has sometimes been thought. The reality, it seems, is much more personal than that.

Our ideas of beauty, the researchers claim, are formed by our own unique experiences rather than anything we inherit in our DNA. What you may find attractive can be based on your social interactions, the appearance of your first boyfriend or girlfriend or even media images.

While you now ponder the impact that reading The Herald every day may have had on your notions of what is beautiful, it might be worth noting that this research is actually rather encouraging. According to the scientists we will only agree on aesthetic preferences for faces about half the time. That means there is 50 per cent to play for. In short all might be beautiful in the eye of some beholder, even if we do resemble George Galloway more than we do George Clooney.

But maybe we knew this all of this anyway. The human race has been in existence for 2.5 million years or thereabouts and supermodels have only been around since the 1980s after all.