Just like a woman... not

Voyeuristic is my middle name, so hearing about other people’s weird sexual obsessions is something of a personal hobby. Couples who dress up as dogs on the weekend and go 'play' in the woods. Foot fetishes to rival Quentin Tarantino’s. But my hands-down favourite is definitely men who buy love dolls in lieu of conducting a real relationship.
The Real Doll phenomenon is alive and well in a film released this week, Lars and the Real Girl, in which sweet but socially awkward Lars (played by Ryan Gosling) announces to his brother and sister-in-law that he’s bringing his new girlfriend Bianca to dinner. She’s also a sex doll he ordered off the internet, but that’s an itty bitty detail Lars doesn’t seem to notice.
I’d notice if a male friend of mine rocked up at dinner with a human-sized, anatomically correct Barbie, but let's not joke; it could happen. Real dolls are on the rise in Japan – just ask engineer Ta-Bo, 45, whose $170,000 real doll collection is carefully arranged on his living room sofa. "A human girl can cheat on you or betray you sometimes but these dolls never do those things. They belong to me 100 percent," he says.
Er... right.
Turning to real dolls for companionship is, let's face it, slightly weird but OK by me, especially for those who can't have a so-called conventional relationship. After all, loneliness doesn’t discriminate. Turning to real dolls because you’ve had a bad experience or ten out in the dating trenches and have decided to shun the opposite sex for something which can’t talk back, reject your advances or order you to clean the loo... well, that’s just taking things a tad far in my book.

*** Do you agree? I know it’s positively compulsory for anyone who’s been through brutal heartbreak to spout bitterly about how they’re never dating again, but would you, could you? And are there women out there ordering male sex dolls in droves?