Survey finds sex going out of style

Never mind the election, what about the sex? What sex you ask? Precisely. Not a lot of it.

The United Kingdom has a habit of baring its soul every year in what is called the General Household Survey, a compilation of surprising statistics about life in general drawn up from official government polls. This week it came up with the news that four out of every 10 single women aged between 16 and 49 are not having a sexual relationship of any kind.

Just think of the implications. Nearly every young woman's magazine seems absolutely obsessed by sex, with articles on everything from how to win the guy at the next desk to out of the way places to have it away.

It is the one consistency of the cover pages. Sex, sex and more sex - and make sure you do it right. There is the Good Sex Guide on television in case you need to practise your skills and even programmes designed to show you how they do it in other countries.

The most popular comedy series concentrate on sex as their theme and a new BBC drama series, This Life, is about a group of young solicitors who spend more time losing their briefs bed-hopping than they do in court. Nobody complained because it all seemed so real. And don't celebrities and rock stars continue to boast about their conquests? Now unless people are lying to the straight-faced government interviewers, the General Household Survey would appear to expose this all as living a lie.

Interestingly, women who were widowed, separated or divorced were slightly less likely to be celibate than the other single women.

I found the statistics really quite surprising. Just think of every Western movie, most television relationships. They intimate to much more sex than is apparently happening.