Mondo Bizzarro ... Five Hours' Gossip a Day

The Italians talk so much and so animatedly that visitors often wonder what on earth they can be discussing. Now a research firm has come up with the answer: each other.

Urban Italians, it claims, spend an average of five hours a day gossiping.

A survey found the most popular victims were work colleagues and that the place where most tittle-tattle was exchanged was the workplace. Men gossiped almost as much as women, but women spoke more maliciously about others than men did.

The study was based on field work in four Italian cities. Researchers posed as bartenders, sports club workers, hairdressers and shop assistants to build up a picture of what Italians talked about, when, and where.

Surprisingly, despite the popularity of reality shows and celebrity magazines, very little of the gossip was about VIPs. Eta Meta Research, which carried out the survey, calculated that celebrities accounted for only 17% of gossip, compared with 38% for colleagues.

Just as unexpectedly, hairdressing salons turned out to be less of a hotbed for chit-chat than offices or bars.

Five hours a day gossiping may seem to stretch credibility, especially when you bear in mind the time Italians spend discussing sport and food.

Until yesterday's study, these had always been regarded as their two main topics of conversation.

However, a country otherwise resistant to technological change has one of the highest rates of mobile telephone ownership in the world. Last year, this exceeded one mobile per head of population.

Time spent gossiping on mobiles did not appear to have figured in the survey. So five hours a day could be an under-estimate.