Is that a copy of War and Peace in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

I love the way surveys-as-news crop up at this time of year, when bugger all is happening and papers and website still have column inches to fill.

So a story in the Daily Telegraph today makes me laugh almost as hard as it makes me cringe.

The story (and apologies because my links bit isn't working for some reason) found that more than a third of Britons will lie about about books and magazines they have read to impress a prospective date. Sounds about right to me but the really disturbing bit is the break down of ‘top ten reads’ to impress a man or woman and, no, I’m not sure how they came up with them.

FOR A MAN it goes something like this:
1. Current affairs websites
2. Shakespeare
3. Song lyrics
4. Cookery books
5. Poetry
6. Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom
7. Jane Austen
8. Facebook/Myspace
9. Religious texts
10. Financial Times.

Sadly FOR A WOMAN it’s no better:

1. Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom AGAIN
2. Shakespeare
3. Cookery Books
4. Poetry
5. Song lyrics
6. Current affairs websites
7. Text messages
8. Emails
9. Financial Times
10. Facebook.

Now I do appreciate that clearly these poor respondents had to respond to multi-choice range of options and weren’t spontaneously deciding that reading the bible Really Does It For Them but… really? I mean REALLY?

I have nothing against Mr Mandela or what I imagine would be a fascinating story but vom-it. Ditto for anyone, no matter how cute they were, pulling a copy of fucking Hamlet out of their bag on a first date. Whatev, mate. Even if he was completely genuine I would still assume he was a liar. And, obviously, a massive wanker.

But some of the other stuff is even weirder… um, emails? Facebook? Who gets impressed by visual evidence the object of ones affection knows how to use a computer? Cavemen and women? Text messages are almost worse – I mean, sure, we all use them but if his idea of a good time means fiddling with his predictive text the chances are your break up speech (should such a day arrive) will read something like UR DUMPED SO SORRY ITS ME NOT U.

To summarise: people are weeeeird.