Last week I got an email from Apple. This is not unusual: pretty much everything I own has been sold to me by the Mac corporation, and they like to send me appreciative little notes from time to time in return. Well, appreciative notes and hard sells. This particular email was an example of the latter: “Sounds like love,” it whispered, seductively. “Give iPod this Valentine’s Day.”

I raised an eyebrow at my inbox. Have you ever received an iPod as a Valentine’s Day gift? I haven’t, and it’s not because nobody loves me. I know this because my mum sends me a card every year. No, iPods haven’t formed a major part of my V-Day celebrations because an iPod just isn’t a romantic gift. And in its sleek, metallic heart of hearts, Apple knows this too, because that email also included some desperate suggestions for increasing the romantic impact of your electronic gift. “Fill an iPod Touch with love songs! It’ll be love at first Touch,” it gushed, and then, more boldly, “Love comes in all sizes. Let them shoot a love story using iPod nano, or give them a little love to take everywhere with iPod shuffle.” Come on, Apple. You can do better than this. That email has no artistry; it’s just a primal, capitalist cry of “there’s an event approaching! Buy our products!”

But what should you get someone for Valentine’s Day? I’m a sucker for greetings card holidays and sentimentality, but I can’t be alone in thinking that an overpriced MP3 player is not the most appropriate of gifts. Whilst the glare from the screen might temporarily blind your beloved and give you an opportunity to move in for the kiss, it’s hard to think of any other meaningful upside to exchanging computer hardware as a symbol of love. What does it say? “Darling, you make my heart feel like it’s on shuffle”? Hmm.

But if we can’t ask multinational corporations for our romantic cues and gift ideas, then to whom can we turn? Surely, as in all things, we must look to celebrities. After all, they are the masters of the overblown romantic gesture. In discussions about Valentine’s with my friends, stories involving James Blunt have come up so many times that it would seem odd not to include him in the list of helpless celebrity romantics. His conquests have achieved near-mythical status. Apparently he once showered his girlfriend’s house with thousands of roses dropped from a helicopter overhead, filled a bath with champagne to surprise her, and if that wasn’t enough, he was also responsible for the cringe-a-long charm extravaganza ‘You’re Beautiful’, written about a real person. Googling has failed to confirm or deny the truth of those first two rumours, but Blunt’s song has undeniably transformed romantic gestures the world over. It’s the essential soundtrack to a declaration of love. Thanks, James.

In general, I’m suspicious of romantic gestures. Anything dramatic or expensive is much more of a reflection on the arrogance of the gesturer than on the power of their love. It’s just showing off: a multicoloured peacock tail for the metrosexual, with Valentine’s Day as the epicentre of the modern mating ritual. If somebody flew a helicopter over my house and dropped thousands of roses from it, my first instinct would be terror. My second would be to call the police. It’s the sort of thing you might expect to find in a Shakespearean sonnet if you’d never actually read one, or the kind of experience you might assume makes a relationship if you’d never progressed further than pulling in Cindies. The romantic gesture is a fantasy that becomes ridiculous and unsavoury as soon as you start to think about it properly. Dramatic gestures are actually quite threatening, particularly when they’re coupled with a marriage proposal; the implication is that if this person has spent so much money and time on proving their love to you, then you owe them something in return. And what could you possibly give? If you retaliate with an even bigger romantic gesture, then you’ll be trading expensive surprises for the rest of your relationship. Which probably won’t be long.

Usually, I think that trying hard is one of the greatest human virtues. I respect, for instance, an intricate fancy dress costume and a well-decorated birthday cake. A big romantic gesture should be right up my street. But when I imagine what it would be like if somebody actually bought me a necklace worth millions or took me on a surprise trip to Rome, I come over all English: embarrassed and cross. A nice phone call or a letter is much less awkward than a gesture that has taken months of planning and huge expense. And even a rose or a box of chocolates is just a crude caricature of emotion, rather than a deep symbol of affection. So please, keep it simple this Valentine’s Day, and remind your chosen one that love can’t be summarised in a trinket or a ‘Ta-da!’ And definitely not in an iPod.