We've had the Economist's Big Mac index, we've had the iPod index, now brace yourself for the latest snapshot of the varying cost of living around the world: the PriceRunner Safe Sex League Table 2009.
I realise that by writing about this I am giving them the publicity they so clearly crave, but bear with me because you might be mildly interested in the results (you did after all click on this blog post).
The index suggests that for once it's not us Brits who are paying over the odds – the real protection racket is going on in Rome. For a pack of 10 Durex Pleasuremax condoms shoppers there are paying a substantial £12.76, almost double the global average of £6.69. Other predominantly Catholic cities follow close behind: in Lisbon the average cost is £9.33 while in Dublin it weighs in at £8.99.
In London, which ranked above Rome and Dublin in Mercer's latest global cost-of-living index (Lisbon didn't make it into the 50 most expensive), the same product costs £6.62. That's right, we actually pay slightly less than the international average. But in Moscow, Oslo and Copenhagen – all cities which, according to Mercer, have a higher cost of living – shoppers also pay below the global average, and less than us.
The cheapest of the 33 cities surveyed by Pricerunner was Mumbai where the condoms sell for £1.29 a pack, or what the press release rather curiously describes as "just a drop in the bucket".
Apparently, across the globe the price of condoms has risen, with Parisian shoppers seeing a 25% uplift in the cost of French letters over the past year. Rubber prices have risen over the past 12 months, after plummeting as the recession hit the automotive industry, but it seems pretty unlikely that consumers benefited when prices were falling.
So what does this tell us? Pricerunner's Marc Thomas seems to suggest that as a nation we should take some comfort from the fact we're able to have cheap, if cheerless, sex. "Brits have always believed that when it comes to romance, the French and Italians were simply unbeatable," he says. "But when it comes to practicing safe sex we can at least revel in the fact that compared to the French, Spanish, Italians and Americans, we're getting a much better bargain." Or, you might say, more bang for our buck.
