Here at Mecca Bingo, we realize just how important friends are. It’s why we put so much effort into making our clubs and chat rooms welcoming and sociable, and pride ourselves on being the friendliest club in the world. (Well, we think so anyway!)

But, we also realize there’s an age-old question, to which we don’t yet know the answer… can men and women ever just be friends?

It’s hard to believe that’s it’s been 25 years since ‘Harry’ first met ‘Sally’ (remember the film featuring that scene in the New York deli?) and prompted us to start thinking about whether the sexes really can successfully mix.

During the film, a very young looking Billy Crystal and pre-botox Meg Ryan taught us that friendship is pretty difficult, because ‘the sex always gets in the way’! But is this true of real life?

Unfortunately we believe in most cases it is, and to be honest we think it’s the fault of the men (isn’t everything?) who find it seemingly impossible to have a nice, platonic relationship with a female, without them thinking it might, one day, lead to something more.

It turns out that men are easily confused creatures who often mistake a bit of friendly banter or conversation for flirting. For example, how many times have you been in a pub or club and flashed a friendly smile at a lonely looking man, only to have him pounce on you quoting some of his finest chat up lines five minutes later?

Women aren’t completely blameless either! Let’s be honest ladies, have you ever harbored a secret crush on a male work colleague or enjoyed the company of a man at the gym slightly more than you should? Of course you have – although you probably wouldn’t admit this to anyone, right?

A study completed in 2003 backed up this theory, finding that more than 14% of people reported feeling romantic attraction and over 50% of people some kind of physical attraction to their friends of opposite sex – admitting that whilst they wouldn’t necessarily be interested in any kind of relationship with them, could totally see why someone else would.

This basically means that in every man/woman friendship at least one of them feels some kind of romantic or physical attraction to the other. However, it turns out this isn’t actually such a bad thing after all:

• Having good friends (whether or not they’re attracted to you) is good for your emotional and physical health
• Knowing you’re still desirable to the opposite sex is flattering and gives your ego a boost
• Having friends of the opposite sex means you always have someone to ask for advice – who better to explain to you why your husband is behaving so weirdly, than another man?

So it would seem that a little bit of attraction could actually be a good thing – it’s what you do about it that counts.

So to conclude, it appears that men and women can just be friends, providing you’re able to be honest with each other (within reason) laugh it off and leave it behind. After all, what are friends for?