Booking Through Thursday : The Other Side of the Coin

Last week we discussed our favourite female characters... well, Booking Through Thursday have done the sensible thing and evened up the balance - who are your favourite male lead characters?

I found this much more difficult. Most of the novels I read, certainly most of my favourite novels, tend to be written by women and have female protagonists. The empathy lies with the woman, often in the first person, and so the male characters become obstacles or love interests or in some way affect the female. Difficult to treasure a character without empathy. Especially since a lot are in the Rochester / Mr. de Winter model (i.e. quite irritating and bafflingly attractive to women) or Heathcliff model (wholly loathsome) or Mr. Darcy model (ok... but mostly there to track the development of the heroine.)

I'm not getting very far, am I? Would Eeyore count, I wonder? I'm very fond of Norman, the narrator of Miss Hargreaves, but he pales in comparison to Miss H herself. I think I might have to plump for the anonymous narrator of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, alongside the loveable Mr. Bingley. Why do I have to look so far back to find any male characters who are kind without being pathetic, or witty without being crude? C'mon, novelists, we boys need some role models...