I am a sucker for those surveys that tell you how much of your life time you spend doing a certain activity. For instance did you know that the average person spends 92 days of their life going to the toilet and 22 years asleep?!

Yesterday I came across an absolute classic in this genre – apparently the average man will spend around a year of his life eyeing up women. This figure has been broken down into an average of 43 minutes per day – that’s 43 minutes per day – gawping at ten different women.

I did a further breakdown of this eye-popping statistic and worked out that he must therefore spend 4.3 minutes ogling each woman.

Now although I don’t have access to any Home Office statistics on the subject I assume that the average man doesn’t usually get arrested for this kind of behaviour so how on earth are they getting away with it?

Last night I carried out my own study in the pub after my writing group and, when two attractive blondes sashayed in, the secret was revealed. The men in the group began a series of surreptitious glances blonde-ward which, timed individually, took up no more than a second, but totted up on my ogle-ometer soon came to about 4.3 minutes worth of staring per man.

Later, when I saw my boyfriend (and still smarting from his ‘little roadside floral tribute’ line – see earlier blog) I decided to have a bit of fun.

“So who are they then?” I demanded, waving the newspaper cutting at him.

“Who are who?” he said, not even looking up from his Non-League Football Directory.

“The ten women you’ve spent nearly three quarters of an hour today eyeing up.”

He stared at me – but not in a way that could be considered part of his daily 43 minute ogling quota – it was more the kind of look you would give to the clinically insane.

“Apparently the average man spends one year of his life ogling women,” I took great pleasure in informing him. “Which breaks down into 43 minutes per day and ten different women. So who are they?”

My boyfriend looked horrified.

I smiled smugly and waited for the flood of apologies.

“Is that all?” he finally replied. “I thought it would be way more than that.”