When Sex And The City first burst on to our television screens 10 or so years ago, the escapades of its four designer-clad stars got top billing in the next morning’s office gossip. This series’ authenticity delighted a generation of women in a way others have since tried to emulate to disappointing effect.

It may seem rather embarrassing now, but back then the show represented a parallel universe of sorts, the fantasy wardrobes notwithstanding, for my group of 20-something girlfriends. Carrie Bradshaw and her cohorts spoke to professional women who fancied themselves as sassy, powerful and poised to uncover the ultimate truth in their quest for love.

The series depicted girl talk so graphically our male peers collectively shuddered and made a dash for the safety of girls not far clear of their 21st birthdays.

As was said so many times back then, the show tapped into the zeitgeist of young women reaping the rewards of the sexual and feminist revolution, but dancing around their fears that all this freedom wasn’t yielding any lasting rewards. Conservatives who attacked the series probably never watched it because, in truth, these girls weren’t really having fun.

The gutsy four got most of their thrills from each other; debriefing in swish bars and trendy lofts in the meat-packing district about their latest bruising encounter with the opposite sex.

But the sexual adventures themselves merely fleshed out the reality that most 30 to 40-something single women, women who once believed their lives to be charmed, were left sampling an endlessly recycled cast of commitment phobics and narcissists, adulterers and mommy’s boys, fetishists, freeloaders, closet gays and so on.

Carrie’s almost crippling self-doubt and introspection sprung from the sometimes quite painful clash between her faith in romantic love and the hard knocks reality delivered.

As the TV series wound down in 2004, our heroines were limping towards 40 and beyond, each confronting all-too-familiar trials: infertility and breast cancer, the angst of juggling new motherhood with the demands of the office, and the on-again, off-again relationship roller-coaster. I got rather sick of these girls; their insight continually lagged behind their life experience and eventually even the pretence of fun started to wane.

I have little interest in seeing the movie released recently, though I was still moved to be across the characters’ development. And you have to pause at news the film enjoyed a record opening for a romantic comedy, reaping $2 million at the box office despite underwhelming reviews that judged the effort formulaic, the script stilted and the product-placement unrelenting.

Women clearly still hunger for this epic. And it’s the open-ended narrative of Sex And The City that accounts for its enduring appeal.

I figure it’s OK to reveal that the happily-ever-after resolution continues to elude Carrie and co. Children and marriage may be present in their lives, but not as the neat package they once dreamed of. Relationships remain fragile or out-of-reach, families complicated by separation, divorce or problems with reproduction, the future very much a whatever-will-be-will-be proposition.

It is precisely this lack of narrative closure that continues to resonate with contemporary women; the kind of meandering plot largely alien to their mothers and grandmothers. Figures from the 2006 census showed three in four people under 35 had never been married and a quarter of women in their mid-30s to mid-40s were single.

Researchers now talk about new social norms of partnering across a lifetime; falling in love with one person in your late teens, rehearsing marriage with a long de facto marriage in your 20s, rearing children with someone entirely different in the 30s and 40s and bonding with yet another for retirement and the "third age."

Yes, our popular culture still offers up the fairytale romance, stories that end when lips meet and the screen dissolves, but fewer and fewer people buy it.

There’s a touch of nostalgia, perhaps, to Carrie’s persistent if wavering faith that her life is a Mills & Boon novel, in which all her nagging doubts about Mr Big’s constancy and whether the universe in fact owes her complete happiness will be laid to rest.

A stocktake of my girlfriends 10 years on suggests many of their stories are still unfolding; they are yet to partner, or have partnered just in the nick of time and are crossing fingers with hope, or they’re grappling with the joys and challenges of blended families, or they’re quietly mourning as careers, or dreams of parenthood, slip away.

The youthful bodies sag, the regular girls’ nights drop off, but the drama, replete with loose ends, twists and turns, kicks on.

Breakfast really could be the most important meal of the day when it comes to losing weight, claims a researcher.

Over several months, obese women who ate half their daily calories first thing fared better than those eating a much smaller amount.

US researcher Dr. Daniela Jakubowicz told a San Francisco conference having a small breakfast could actually boost food cravings.

A UK expert said a big breakfast diet might simply be less boring.

Dr. Jakubowicz, from Virginia Commonwealth University, has been recommending a hearty breakfast to her patients for 15 years. She tested it against a low carbohydrate diet in a study of 96 obese and physically inactive women.

This diet involved 1,085 calories a day — the majority of these coming from protein and fat.

Breakfast here was the smallest meal of the day — just 290 calories, with just seven grams of carbohydrates.

Her "big breakfast" diet involved more calories — 1,240 — with a lower proportion of fat and more carbohydrates and protein. Breakfast here was 610 calories, with 58 grams of carbohydrates, while lunch and dinner were 395 and 235 calories respectively.

Four months on, the low-carb dieters appeared to be doing better, losing an average of 28 pounds to the 23 shed on the "big breakfast" diet. However, after eight months, the situation had reversed, with the low-carb dieters putting an average of 18 of those pounds back on, while the big breakfasters continued to lose weight, on average 16.5 pounds each.

They lost a fifth of their total body weight on average, compared with less than 5% for the low-carb dieters.

Dr. Jakubowicz reported that the big breakfasters said they felt less hungry, particularly in the mornings.

She said: "Most weight loss studies have determined that a very low carbohydrate diet is not a good method to reduce weight.

"It exacerbates the craving for carbohydrates and slows metabolism — as a result, after a short period of weight loss, there is a quick return to obesity."

She said that the bigger breakfast helped by making people feel fuller during the day, and was healthier, because it allowed more fibre and fruit to be included.

Dr. Alex Johnstone, from the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, said that other studies had shown that while low-carb diets were a ‘good tool’ to reduce weight quickly, they were not a ‘diet for life.’

She said that the regaining of lost weight by these dieters could be more a sign of the relative monotony of the two diets, rather than their ability to necessarily reduce cravings.

"It could be that it is simply easier for people on a higher-carbohydrate diet to comply with it over a longer period."

A spokesman for the British Nutrition Foundation said there was evidence that a good-sized breakfast could help dieters.

She said: "Research shows that eating breakfast can actually help people control their weight.

"This is probably because when we don't have breakfast we're more likely to get hungry before lunch and snack on foods that are high in fat and sugar, such as biscuits, doughnuts or pastries."

Have neckties finally come undone?

They were the best of ties. They were the worst of ties. Skinny little beatnik ties and mod doublewide ties. Suave and sophisticated Frank Sinatra ties and greedy Gordon Gekko power ties. Bar Mitzvah boy clip-on ties and Jerry Garcia trippin' ties. And, of course, all those closet doors decked with millions of gifted ties.

But now, comes word that the necktie — that elongated swatch of silk or polyester or rayon whose donning has long marked a male rite of passage while serving no discernible utility — may be fading into the fashion sunset.

The recent decision by the Men's Dress Furnishings Association — the trade group for America's neckwear makers — to shut down has some folks tied up in knots. A calendar crammed with casual Fridays (and Mondays and Thursdays ...) has exacted its last, grim toll, some said.

In an age where some people show up for job interviews in thongs, the imminent death of the tie seems plausible.

But before we deliver the eulogy for the necktie, consider this:

Men have been wrapping and winding pieces of cloth around their necks for hundreds of years. It's clear that the tie, once the very symbol of the male establishment, is far from the icon it used to be.

Still, there's small comfort for neckwear makers: At least they're not selling fedoras.

And, given the fickleness of fashion and the fact that some occasions still demand a tie, it's probably too soon to write its epitaph. "You almost want to say, 'poor necktie,' so abused and underappreciated," says Candace Corlett, president of the consulting firm WSL Strategic Retail.

Predictions of the necktie's demise have been circulating for years. In the mid-1990s, designer Gianni Versace offered his vision of male fashion in a coffee-table book titled Men Without Ties, a sure sign of where things were headed. A bronzed Adonis dashed across its cover dressed in nothing but a few ties, lashed loosely around his waist.

The burgeoning popularity of casual Fridays turned khakis and open collar-shirts into suitable wear for workplaces previously better suited to suits. The dot-com boom filled thousands of instant offices with laid-back twentysomethings who saw no point in lashing something tight around their necks.

But rumours of the tie's death are roughly equivalent to the longtime predictions that the computer would soon turn society paperless. There's a lot of truth to the prognostication, but somehow it hasn't quite turned out that way.