THERE’S nothing more we hacks love than a survey. Not the dreary or spinechilling sort, like the ones which claim that 76 per cent of British women have no savings or pension, or that 26 per cent of men would cheat on their wives, given half a chance. Which I just made up, by the way.

No. The ones we love are those that purport to inform us that 19 per cent of people who live in the north of England reckon their husband/ partner is useless at cooking/ croquet/decoupage, whereas 43 per cent of those in the south are deemed inefficient at carpentry/ whippet-racing/growing enormous and indecently-shaped vegetables.

You know the stuff I mean, totally random, unimportant information that didn’t exist until some company flogging tea-bags or aftershave or athlete’s foot treatment decided to make it known for the purposes of plugging their product.

It’s the vicarious apparent desperation of it all that fascinates me; the pitiable marrying of ‘facts’, figures, statistics, ‘new’ information, with a celebrity and a product you thought had gone out of circulation until the survey jolts your mind back to its continued existence.

Earlier this week a cracker dropped into my inbox: ‘Survey reveals that Robbie Williams is UK’s first choice in winter emergency’.

Yes, really. Because if your boiler goes up like the Death Star the first person you’d want to pop round and help with that is an ageing boy-band singer who probably reckons a monkey wrench is some kind of wrestling hold, isn’t it?

According to this survey – which was conducted on behalf of Duck Tape and whose responders sounded to me, anyway, like some poor PR intern’s Facebook friends – the other celebrities we would like to help us with a domestic emergency are David Beckham and Gary Barlow. Followed by Adrian Chiles, Eamonn Holmes and – brace yourselves ladies and gentlemen – Piers Morgan.

Never mind that most people would rather put Piers Morgan’s head down the toilet than get him to fix it, never mind the fact that if Eamonn Holmes did fetch up at your gaff the fridge would run away in terror, and never mind the fact that the whole point of David Beckham is to just step back and admire the view.

The person you’d most want in this situation is your plumber.

True, Becks has proved his manly worth in an emergency – remember when he helped that dad push his broken-down motor off a busy roundabout? But Robbie Williams? Adrian Chiles?

The real trouble with all these surveys is that they never ask the right questions.

The correct answer to which celeb would you most like to have dinner with is Ian Hislop. (Because he’ll make you laugh.) The correct answer to which celeb would you most like to read you, sorry, THE KIDS a bedtime story is Johnny Depp, dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow.

And the correct answer to who you would most like to help with a winter emergency is either Jon the plumber or James Bond. Why he? Well, if you’ve seen Skyfall you know he can do almost anything, from blowing up wrongdoers to riding a motorbike over a tiled roof.

He is also the person you would most like to share a sun-bed with.

How do I know this? Because that survey comes round every year. And the answer is never going to be Adrian Chiles, is it?

  • It’s not like being boiled in oil or endlessly poked with Satan’s trident but that aside, is there anything more hellish that being the only person in the world who doesn’t want to see Les Miserables?

Everywhere you go, people ask if you are going to see it. When you say no, they demand to know why.

“I can’tbelieveyoudon’twantoseeLes Miserablesit’sbrilliantyoumustseeityou’ll loveitIcan’tbelieveyoudon’twant toseeit,” they wail. On and on they go until your ears start bleeding and you lose the will to live.

As far as I am aware there is no law anywhere, not even under the wretched European Human Rights Act, that says I have to enjoy films about revolutionary France, especially ones where the main protagonists keep bursting unnervingly into song.

Anne Hathaway, recently – and in my opinion quite correctly – described as a pile of eyelashes, gets on my nerves to the point where my scalp itches and the idea of having to witness Russell Crowe singing is worse than the Norovirus.

I hope all of you who want to see Les Mis do go many, many times and enjoy it every time you do. I’ll be thinking of you when I settle down, yet again, to enjoy watching MY favourite movie of all time: The Godfather.

As the mighty Don Vito Corleone so wisely counselled: Keep your friends close... and people who like Les Miserables very far away indeed.