Lily Allen declares love for Sam Cooper

It seems that Lily is finally able to put her unlucky dating history behind her, as she declares how head-over-heels in love she is with her builder boyfriend Sam Cooper.

We've all followed poor Lily's disastrous dating escapades and failed love affairs through the pages of Heat, so it's refreshing to hear from Lily that 'I am really in love, I am really happy.'

And in a lesson for would-be Lotharios everywhere, Lily puts a large part of the relationship's success down to good old-fashioned chivalry and gentlemanly behaviour.

Cooper opens doors for his beau, takes her for dinner, and generally looks after Miss Allen, who has previously stated that she wants to be with 'someone who is not intimidated by me and what I do.'

Allen began the year with a painful and high-profile affair with Sam Taylor Wood's ex-partner Jay Jopling. She had just previously been dating Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers.

So, should our men be taking heed of Sam Cooper's success with the ladies and start to brush up on their chivalric skills? For my money, old-fashioned values are starting to make a comeback in the dating arena. If you look at a handful of internet dating profiles and or check out some personals ads, you'll see that men are starting to make more of the fact that they will look after their lady.

After years of our chaps worrying that opening a door for a woman will land him with a torrent of abuse, we all seem to have come to our senses a bit. It's just plain nice to be taken care of, to have a chair pulled out for us, to be bought a drink. And it doesn't mean that we're disrespecting our suffragette sisters just because a man takes control of where we go for dinner.

Even if you're just after a bit of casual dating rather than wooing the love of your life, it can't hurt to treat your date like a lady. Lots of lasses in their late twenties and thirties have run the gamut of crap dates and endless internet dating disasters. Now they're looking for someone who knows how to take charge of an evening - who will see them home in a cab even if they're not about to be invited in for 'coffee'.

Take a leaf out of Sam Cooper's book, and you could end up with a Lily all of your own and for what - the price of a dinner and the opening of a door or two. Bargain.