I KNOW these are changing times for men. We splash on after-shave, cook exotic sauces, spend several quid on a haircut and outshine most women at the ironing.

I've even known hard men talk about feelings. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers are probably spinning in their graves like fairground waltzers wondering what on earth they endured those years in the First World War trenches for if all that came out of it 80 years later was a bunch of jessies, soft as their moisturised skins.

Still, modern lads are broad-shouldered and we're not ashamed of being more in touch with our feminine sides than our ancestors.

In fact, we're proud of it but there is a limit.

And that limit, surely, has been exposed in a survey by hotel chain Travelodge that says that one in five men sleeping on their own takes a teddy bear to bed.

One in five! That was more than the number of solitary-sleeping sentimental women who sleep with their teddy bears.

Now I've got nothing against soft toys, though it has to be said that even as a small boy I took my football (imaginatively called Football) to bed in preference to Benjy the Bendytoy Rabbit. (And, yes, my Auntie used to call me "Ted" instead of Ed but I soon put a stop to that.) Soft toys have their uses. When my daughter was a child the family's most treasured possession was Bone the Pig. If Bone was mislaid, the world had to stop while we tracked him down. And much the same was true of Brawn, Bacon and Truffle, her other toy pigs, although Bone was always number one favourite. And still is.

My wife, too, still owns David the Teddy, who once was left behind on Weymouth beach and swept out to sea. Miraculously, David was discovered the next day, washed up on the sand. Minus his dress.

And she still keeps bald Olt Teddy' who accom- panied her into hospital when she was a child at the expense of having all his fur shaved off for dubious reasons of hygiene.

And I found out only last weekend that people rearing orphaned squirrels and badgers give them soft toys for comfort. Sweet or what?

But when you are a grown man, different rules apply.

John Betjeman, famously, was devoted to his teddy, Archibald, throughout his adult life. Betjeman, however, was a poet and hence, is excused eccentricities.

Mr Bean, too, I'm told.

For we less creative fellows, the Teddy to Bed survey finding made disturbing reading.

It follows hard on the heels of another survey last year that revealed that nearly one in four men admitted they had blubbed when listening to a love song in the previous 12 months. (And what is the betting, the same lot shed bucketloads when someone warbles The Bear Necessities?) One in five men hugging their teddy when sleeping alone is a worryingly high number.

Right now I am looking around the Echo newsroom and see 15 male colleagues who would like to be thought of as world-wise hardened newsmen.

But if the survey's right about that one-in-five figure, three of them are cuddling up at night to their Cuthberts and Mr Giraffes when sleeping on their own.

They should be named and shamed.