No Quick Sex, Please, We're British

Britain leads the world in delayed action in bed, it was revealed yesterday.

A survey produced by condom maker Durex - who else? - shows that we spend 22.5 minutes in foreplay, 36 seconds ahead of the German runners-up and more than three minutes more than the so-called sexy French.

Bottom of the world league are the Thais, who get the preliminaries over in a mere 11.5 minutes (perhaps it's the heat) and would probably urge the Brits to get on with it.

At this stage you have to ask how these measurements were made in 41 countries: lovers with stopwatches? Discreet researchers with clipboards? Egg timers?

The Durex report does not explain. But it makes clear that 350,000 people replied to its global sex survey.

Britons come third in the vibrator league (almost half of us own one) but have sex a mere 119 times a year, way behind the French, who manage it 137 times (probably because they spend only 19 minutes in foreplay).

Sad to say, we are well down the orgasms table. The Italians are champions, with 61% saying they have an orgasm every time they have sex. The Serbians and Montenegrins are panting not far behind but only 19% of Chinese hit the jackpot every time and more than one in 10 of them have never had an orgasm.

But the Chinese compensate by sleeping around a bit: they say they have an average of 19.3 sexual partners each, compared with the more restrained Vietnamese, who have two and a half each.

A quarter of those surveyed confessed to faking an orgasm in the previous year. But 82% of Macedonians and Serbs/Montenegrins bragged that they did not need to.

The survey shows that 35% of the 350,000 watched porn with their partners, 22% donned blindfolds or handcuffs and one in five used sex toys. Women are keener on porn than men, and are more likely to reach for the blindfolds and cuffs.

Icelanders are the quickest to sample the pleasures of the flesh and have sex for the first time at an average age of 15.7. Perhaps it's the cold. The Vietnamese don't get round to it till they are nearly 20.

Sixty-four per cent of Swedes and Danes have had unprotected sex without knowing their partner's sexual history.

The survey does not suggest what percentage of respondents may have lied.