Here is a news story that ran recently in newspapers around the globe (mostly England and, for some reason, a bunch of papers in east Asia). I reprint here in its entirety:

London, Oct 25 — Most men in the UK believe that the girls most likely to have sex with them on the first date are the ones named Kelly.

Second on this list is the name Tanya, followed by Debs or Debbie at third place.

Fourth on the list of women most likely to sleep with men on their first date was the name Becky.

The list was rounded off by Steph at the fifth place.

The poll of 1,000 men was conducted for global research website OnePoll.com.

Spokesman John Sewell said that it showed that some names have certain connotations.

“It’s strange how certain names have connotations,” The Sun quoted him, as saying. “If guys have a good experience with a girl of a certain name, they tend to remember them. It’s bad news if your name is Kelly, though.”

Other names reckoned to be up for bedroom action include Michelle, Tina, Lisa and Carly.

If you haven’t seen this story before now, it’s almost surely because your local paper focuses on issues and policies and big-picture crap like that. Too bad for you. This is the kind of practical information which, if newspapers made more frequent use of it, could help pull the journalism industry out if its current decline. Who wouldn’t buy a newspaper that routinely had useful tips for getting action?

Grateful as I am for this information, though, I have to wonder: Who thinks up a poll subject like this? Are there people who actually get paid for coming up with bizarre sociological questions that can be posed to a random collection of 1,000 people? I have this image of an office where, on any given morning, one of the poll gurus bustles in and says, “OK, how ’bout this idea — let’s ask people what disgusting, vile thing they’d eat for a million bucks. We’ll give ‘em a dozen or so choices and see which one comes out on top.” A few months later, you open your morning paper and read about a survey revealing that 42 percent of the population would eat a bowl of baboon snot for a million dollars.

Except you won’t be able to read it, because that story wouldn’t be in your newspaper. Unless you lived in, say, Kuala Lampur — where women named Kelly are suddenly popular, I hear.

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