John Walsh: You delude yourself if you believe in chivalry

Has chivalry died out, or is it alive and kicking online? Michelle Dockery – Lady Mary in Downton Abbey – told Radio Times how she regrets that the courtesy towards women displayed by chaps in the fictional 1910s has died out: "Men standing when women arrive at the dinner table... opening doors for you. It's lovely when you see a man doing that. But young men wouldn't think about that because it's not the culture any more." Hmmm.

I think Michelle is in denial about the Downton days. As millions of viewers know, Lord Downton (Hugh Bonneville) may be a whizz at the standing up and the door-opening, but his instinct last Sunday, when alone with a widowed maid, was to snog her unceremoniously beside the decanted burgundy. And I don't remember much in the way of parfit gentil knightly conduct when the Turkish diplomat in Series One arrived in Lady Mary's bedroom to offer her a midnight shish kebab. Or do we think chivalry was exclusively an English thing? (It was French actually – the word comes from "chevalier" or horseman.)

Anyway, chivalry is no longer with us, Dockery said. Yes it is, retorted Emily Maitlis, the newsreader with the golden tan and startlingly mad eyes. People are always ready to help her "to sort out a computer glitch or a misdirected printer". She sees "updated chivalry" in the speed with which people reply to emails and in the flood of replies she gets to requests on Twitter.

I'm delighted, of course, that Emily has helpers (I'm imagining lots of geeky men in BBC2 T-shirts) but she's confusing chivalry with simple generosity here.

Technically adept people, men or women, are usually kind-hearted enough to help the cack-handed find their way around an iPad.

Chivalry, by contrast, isn't much to do with kindness or decency. It's mostly acting. The chap who pulls open a door to let a lady through is performing like a courtier with a queen, while silently asserting that she's weak and needs help, poor fluffy thing.

It's a foolish imitation of a past ideal – the knight who combines warrior chivalry, god-fearing chivalry and courtly-love chivalry in one unbearably smug package. It's an illusion, from medieval times, that man can be a heroic being. But luckily women like to join in the chivalry charade.

I bet if someone (someone braver than I) were to kiss Ms Maitlis's hand, she wouldn't say, "What are you doing, you arse?" she'd slightly melt inside. I suspect that if Emily stuck a fag in her mouth and four of her techno-geeks whipped out cigarette lighters to compete for her gratitude, she wouldn't laugh at them, she'd say, "Easy boys," like Lauren Bacall. Chivalry is as much acting as Downton Abbey. Just don't confuse it with virtue.

An exhibition called Ghosts of Gone Birds opened in London yesterday. Ceri Levy, a film- maker, has commissioned a gang of artists (including Peter Blake and Ralph Steadman) to paint "interpretations" of species which have disappeared in recent centuries, to raise money for Birdlife International's Preventing Extinctions charity.

Sadly, no money could have helped the dodo, whose extinction on Mauritius in 1681 is a pathetic tale. Three feet tall, plump, flightless and unafraid of humans, they used to greet the arrival of ships full of hungry sailors by running down the beach calling out the dodo equivalent of "Hello!" and "Welcome!" and "Fancy some lunch?" They died, poor things, from excessive friendliness.

j.walsh@independent.co.uk