Cynicism

You can forget any rot about all the world loving young lovers. Nope, when it comes to romance we are a nation of Doubting Thomases, inclined to raise our eyebrows, shake our heads, and collectively sneer: ''I give it six months.'' That's been the overwhelming prognosis for the union between James Major and Emma Noble, a couple who have excited a level of scorn quite unfitting to their status and influence in the grand scheme of things. Sure, the son of the ex-Prime Minister and the former game show hostess have an enthusiasm for showing up at glitzy bashes which makes even Tara Palmer-Tomkinson look like a home-lovin' gal, but the banality of such freeloading,

publicity-seeking antics hardly justifies the intensity of the contempt which has been directed against them or, more pertinently, the intensity of interest.

More bizarre than the media obsession with two people who are not even gainfully employed at the moment - both chucked in their jobs shortly after they met to concentrate on developing respective ''secret'' projects - has been the

presentation of their relationship. It has been styled as one which daringly

crosses social barriers. Reporting their recent engagement last week, one daily paper marvelled over the fact that the difference in their backgrounds could not be more extreme.

Come again? Sure, Major, a former Marks & Spencer management trainee, went to public school while Noble attended the local comprehensive, but their love story hardly mimics a Prince and the Showgirl scenario, does it? They're not exactly bridging a social chasm. A mere hop, skip, and jump would probably do the trick. It seems ironic that John Major was slyly derided by certain strata of the Conservative press (and his own party,

for that matter) for his lower-middle-class roots while his son is now presented as some sort of toff who is slumming it by hanging out with a girlfriend who lives with her parents in their former council house in Sidcup.

Noble has been portrayed as a social-climbing go-getter, but Major's achievements to date (em, none of any note) hardly mark him out as a distinguished prize. He may have some cache in being the son of a former premier, but let us not forget that he is the unemployed son of a former premier. He was a nightclub manager when Noble met him, an occupation which may appeal to a dedicated party-girl but not exactly one bound to overwhelm a TV regular such as herself.

The media interest intensified when James Major proposed to his lover last week, while they attended a music ceremony in Monte Carlo, after their three-month romance. Now, this is the one action of the couple which could be described as newsworthy. A chap in his twenties declaring that level of commitment after such a short time? No wonder it was literally a case of ''Hold the front page!'' In presenting Noble with a platinum solitaire Major was bucking against the current trend for co-habitation.

His proposal was undoubtedly a stout-hearted gesture, one which should have made the nation coo ''aaah''. Instead we all snorted ''pah!'' and dismissed it as a publicity stunt. Media manipulation has been inferred, but public reaction to this engagement says more about our own cynicism than it does about theirs. Things have come to a pretty pass when it seems more credible that two young people are pulling off a stunt in a bid to further

their careers than the possibility that they are truly besotted. The suggestion that they are head-over-heels in love - as they claim - becomes one simply too outrageous to contemplate.

Undoubtedly, they both revel in the limelight. They're quick to canoodle for the cameras and the passion for ''old-

fashioned frocks'' which Noble declared in the current issue of Hello! was difficult to detect in the tacky, see-through ensemble she slipped into for the Baftas. However, it is unfair and callous to assume that their relationship is insincere.

But we have become so used to the spectacle of celebrity marriages unravelling - such as the major-league unions between Sean Penn and Madonna, Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford, and Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, not to mention the high-profile royal marriages of Charles and Di and Andy and Fergie - that we are now instantly dismissive of any relationship played out in the public eye.

The news that Mel B also got engaged last week brought about a similar wave of scepticism. After a 10-week relationship with Scary Spice, Jimmy Gulzer, a dancer on the Spice Girls tour, recited a love poem and presented her with a diamond ring to her gasps of delight. Catty theories immediately abounded; she was vulner-able, on the rebound from her doomed relationship to Icelander Fjolnir Thorgeisson; she must be envious of the impending nuptials of Posh Spice (who marries footballer David Beckham this summer); it was a case of the Pop Princess and the Showboy, ie, Gulzer must have a glad eye on her fortune.

Amid this climate of cynicism comes news that the Government is working on proposals to make pre-marital contracts legally binding - thus effectively legislating for an ever-increasing lack of faith in marital vows. In more ways than one we are becoming a heartless society, one in which love is not valued but dismissed as a passe fairytale, where the sight of a devoted couple simply makes us sit back and wait for the inevitable spat.