A new term, polyamory, has been coined to describe sexual promiscuity, but does it really make people happy?

So now it's polyamory. This is the new name for free love and multiple relationships - what we used to call "sleeping around". Only now it's been graced by its new name in a paper presented to the British Psychological Conference by Dr Meg Barker.

And as she has four lovers of both sexes, including a man and woman with whom she lives alternately, I guess she knows what she's talking about.

Polyamory, she says, takes the pressure off one person having to be all things to another. All her lovers, and their lovers, accept each other.

Well, yes. It takes the pressure off and adds a certain freedom to life and love.

It's not new, of course, and was always particularly prevalent among poets and painters who relished the freedom from bourgeois ties and responsibilities. And I suppose if everyone's happy and not frightening the horses, then it doesn't do the rest of us much harm.

But from artists' studios to rock tours and hippy communes, the idea of free love has often foundered - and usually, ironically, on the rocks of true love.

If all the groups hop in and out of bed with cheerful abandon and barely a niggle of doubt or jealousy, then there's no problem. But there is almost always someone who doesn't understand the rules.

This poor someone - usually, though not always, a woman - goes and gets it wrong and falls in plain old fashioned love, the sort of love where you want to spend all your time with one person and want them to feel the same way, not pencil you in some time a week next Thursday.

It must be miserable to be the only one in old fashioned love in a circle of light-hearted bed-hoppers.

And if they're in bed with the object of your affections - and maybe his lover as well - then it all gets a bit complicated. And very often tragic.

And that's before we consider the possibility of children in this happy set up.

Polyamory might seem like a good idea. But like all such amazing offers, before you get involved, it's best to study the small print.

In the meantime, the rest of us might consider Dr Barker and her four lovers and wonder how on earth she finds the time - not to mention the energy.

BROADCASTER Rosie Millard has written in sprightly style about being an Impoverished Professional. She apparently owes more than £40,000 on her credit cards and spends every month juggling one card against another - what a laugh, eh? - and says she's broke.

Well, not quite. One of the reasons she has so much debt is that she bought a couple of flats to let out for profit - including one in Paris.

Her idea of being broke reminds me of some friends of mine years ago. One never had the cash to buy his pants at Marks & Spencer, so would instead spend twice as much on them at Austin Reed - because it went on his father's account. Another - in the long dead days when trains were cheap and airfares extortionate - was stranded in Greece and persuaded her father to transfer funds for the plane rather than the train "because if you travel by plane, they feed you as well".

I think their idea of broke is just a little different from yours and mine.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people out there who have scrimped and saved, paid their debts on time and consider it a point of honour never to buy anything with money they don't have. Goodness knows what they thought about Ms Millard's amusement over her finances.

Then there are those desperately juggling credit card debt but without the nanny to sack or the Parisian flat to sell in case of emergency. Hope they found Rosie's article a good laugh.