Are you more David Brent than Strictly Come Dancing? Blame your mother

Can't work out why you suddenly lose all co-ordination when you hit the dancefloor? Well, at last there is some good news. It's not your fault - blame your mother.

Academics have discovered that men's ability to dance is dictated by what happens in the womb, specifically the amount of testosterone to which they are exposed. A team of British and German psychologists have found out that a man's expertise (or lack of it) is predetermined by levels of prenatal hormonal exposure.

New research by Bernhard Fink of the University of Goettingen in Germany and colleagues, including John Manning from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, shows that the key indicator is the respective lengths of men's index finger and their ring finger - what scientists call the 2D:4D ratio.

According to tests they conducted, the lower a man's 2D:4D ratio, the more testosterone he will have been exposed to before being born and thus the better dancer he will be - and also the more likely to attract female admiration. Men with a high 2D:4D ratio, however, are likely to lumbered with the social handicap of chronic inability to dance.

If you've never seen Ricky Gervais as David Brent dancing, here he is.