MiramaxThe toilet: A safe haven of peace and quiet time, a potty to put your feet up, your own personal throne.
Whatever you call the toilet, humans have put the pooper on a pedestal since it was invented way back in 1596, not by Thomas Crapper – because coincidence isn’t that kind – but by Sir John Harrington, the Godson of Queen Elizabeth I.
Ever since its regal beginnings, we’ve been whiling away the collective hours spending a lot of time on the loo, even in the pre-meme epoch.
20th Century FoxAt the head of the chase for this sedentary lifestyle, are us Brits, who spend twice as long on the toilet each week as they spend exercising, according to a new poll.
Incredibly, the average British adult whiles away three hours and nine minutes sitting on their loo every week, but just 90 minutes exercising, according to a poll of 2,000 adults carried out by not-for-profit body UKactive.
Men are much more likely to take their sweet time on the loo than women, according to another survey carried out by bathroom company, Bathstore.
Warner Bros. It found men spend an hour and 45 minutes every week going to the toilet – whereas women get everything over with in a mere 85 minutes a week.
The poll of 2,500 people revealed going to the toilet accounts for the biggest chunk of time spent in the bathroom – an average of one hour and 42 minutes a week, or almost 92 days over a lifetime.
That’s 2208 hours, which equates to about the time of Earth’s seasonal cycle.
Public Domain PicturesIn other words, your average human spends as much time on the toilet as it took Sputnik to compete the first spaceflight in 1957, as the first artificial satellite placed into orbit around Earth, where it remained for 92 days.
It’s as long as the 92 days Evelyn Waugh spent in British Guiana and Brazil, writing a travel masterpiece hailed as one of the greatest written works of adventure non-fiction in history.
It’s also the exact amount of time Brock Turner spent in jail, after being convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on campus. FYI.
Stanford Department Of Public SafetyApparently the chamber room is a popular location for escapism, with peace and quiet being high on the list of things people associate with time on the loo.
Nearly half of us (43 per cent of people), reckon the bathroom is the only place they get time to themselves. Another 39 per cent say they often retreat to the bathroom when they want to think.
However, it’s important to remember you can get a prolapsed anus from sitting on the throne for too long. There’s an image.
UniversalA spokesperson for Bathstore, who carried out the research, said:
It’s incredible to think we spend so much time in our bathrooms over the course of our lives, but it just goes to show how important a domestic space it is.
It’s a place to be on your own, to get away from it all.
UniversalWith 560,000 words, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace takes the average reader 31 hours to complete, reports The Scotsman.
So with men spending an average one hour and 45 minutes on the loo each week and women 85 minutes, we could all read the epic twice a year.
And with public loos hosting musical geniuses, who wouldn’t want to? Check this out:
How’s that for broadening your bathroom horizons?
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A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.