The other day we had an ultra-silly survey, this one telling us about the size of men's willies in no fewer than 113 countries.

For this to have the slightest semblance of truth, something like the following must have happened all over the world. The doorbell rings: "Hello, my name is Professor Richard Lynn. I'm doing a survey on the relative sizes of men's reproductive organs in 113 countries. Would you mind awfully if I measured yours?"

"You're measuring men's tackle in 113 countries, you say? I assume you're a poofter?"

"Oh no, on the contrary, I'm an academic. In fact, I'm Irish. We haven't had homosexuals in Ireland since that Wilde feller. We're Catholics, you know."

"I don't believe any of that, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Here you go. How's that for size?"

"Thank you. I'm sorry but I need to measure you in the, ahem, aroused state."

"Of course you do. I'm guessing that you've brought along one of those magazines; the ones with photographs of pretty young women not wearing any clothes?"

"Yes, indeed. Here: I have a selection."

"Splendid. That one will do. Oh, I like her. Okay, I think I'm ready. Measure away."

"Goodness gracious me. Well I never, thank you very much. You will be pleased to know that your participation in our survey has engorged, I mean enlarged, the body of scientific knowledge. You may now pull up your trousers."

Of course no such thing happened; no white-coated academic with a clipboard, a clutch of girlie magazines and a measuring tape came ringing my doorbell to measure up Donkey Delmar.

Similarly, no one ever measured my thoughts on whether you should eat a boiled egg starting at the sharp end or the rounded end (according to the latest poll results, 52% of Lilliputians favour the rounded end, but they can all go to blazes).

Nor was I consulted on whether I agreed with the statement that Nkandla should be developed into a Zululand Sun City with secret government funds (0.03% of sound-minded South Africans and 97.9% of Nkandla residents and senior SABC executives concurred with the statement).

One bit of survey research I didn't make up is the startling, just unveiled, bit of intelligence that the average British family spends £137 a year replacing lost socks - according to a survey commissioned by, would you believe, a sock retailer.

Another piece of survey intelligence just released related to a poll of 406 senior executives all over the world. According to these 406 all-over-the-world senior execs, South Africa is considered a more dynamic investment destination than Greece, Nigeria or Venezuela.

This happy news - that we are the 43rd most dynamic bunch of people in the world - is tempered by the small-print fact that sponsors Grant Thornton's research budget extended to only 50 countries (unlike the tireless if voyeuristic Irishman who somehow measured the length of men's erect members in more than double that number of countries).

According to the just-invented Global Dynamism Index, the world's senior executives consider us a less dynamic lot than the notoriously miserable Russians.

Even the Belgians are supposedly more economically dynamic than us, and Slovenia (a country that may or may not actually exist) is way ahead of us. Our lack of dynamism, it seems, mostly has to do with the matter of our workers always going on strike and, when they don't get what they want, of burning things and shooting people who get in their way. And then being protected by legislation, red tape and timid politicians.

I can't remotely bring myself to believe it costs the average British family the better part of R2000 a year to replace their lost socks or that Greek men have bigger organs than US men. And it positively beggars belief that any right-thinking investor would sooner build a factory in South Africa as it exists today than an admittedly cash-strapped but mostly stable law-abiding Catholic eurozone country overflowing with good cheap red wine, sardines and decent soccer players like Portugal.

This week we learnt that an actor called Robert Pattinson has just been voted "the sexiest man alive" in a poll run by something called Glamour magazine. Toby Shapshak, I notice, didn't even make the top 50. Surely there's been a mistake?