So reads the headline in The Sunday Times, with no bat of an eyelid:

BRITISH men and women are now the most promiscuous of any big western industrial nation, researchers have found.

In an international index measuring one-night stands, total numbers of partners and attitudes to casual sex, Britain comes out ahead of Australia, the US, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.

The researchers behind the study say high scores such as Britain’s may be linked to the way society is increasingly willing to accept sexual promiscuity among women as well as men. They also believe that, among certain age groups and at certain times, men and women are equally liberal.

I wonder who comes bottom. Brits are also poachers:

Schmitt’s findings are reinforced by earlier research showing that the British are more likely than other nationalities to have “stolen” other people’s lovers. A third of British men are in relationships with women they have poached from other long-term relationships, he found.

Among British women, 28% have apparently poached their other halves rather than formed relationships with single men. Only 17% of men in America had poached their girlfriends. In France only 10% of both men and women were poachers. In Germany the figures were 17% of men and 14% of women.

A poacher can turn gamekeeper. As well as casual sex, Britain is almost certainly top nation for badgers. Sarah Lyall, from my post a few weeks ago:

[Britain] has so many badger-support groups that it was deemed necessary to create an umbrella organisation, the National Federation of Badger Groups, now known as the Badger Trust, to coordinate all the disparate badger-related activity.

Game, sett and match.