One boy who is not worried about fitting in with laddish culture is 12 year old Adam Duchateau from Ealing in west London.

BBC: Addressing the gender gap

Nye is best known for laddish comedy Men Behaving Badly, which started life on ITV in 1992 before becoming a hit on BBC One.

BBC: News | Entertainment | Return of The Railway Children

But Top Gear has been reincarnated in the US without any of its British presenters - Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May - whose laddish antics and irreverent humour are such a big part of its appeal.

BBC: Top Gear USA: Will it work without Jeremy Clarkson?

But John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association warned that there were "no instant solutions" to resolving the gender gap in this year's GCSE results, which he said could not be explained away by the "laddish culture".

BBC: Male teachers for 'role models'

He is not just that staple of political novels, the talented son of an artisan, who becomes a socialist and then goes on to turn himself into multi-millionaire, government minister, owner of the New Statesman and (an essential accessory, this, in the laddish culture of New Labour) part-owner of a football club.

ECONOMIST: The