This just raises more questions ...

... but it could explain quite a bit, too.

TV in the bedroom halves your sex life - study

A study by an Italian sexologist has found that couples who have a TV set in their bedroom have sex half as often as those who don't.

"If there's no television in the bedroom, the frequency (of sexual intercourse) doubles," said Serenella Salomoni whose team of psychologists questioned 523 Italian couples to see what effect television had on their sex lives.

On average, Italians who live without TV in the bedroom have sex twice a week, or eight times a month. This drops to an average of four times a month for those with a TV, the study found.

For the over-50s the effect is even more marked, with the average of seven couplings a month falling to just 1.5 times.

As intriguing as these results are, wouldn't it have been nice if the "sexologists" (this major wasn't on the curriculum list when we were in college) could have found out who asked for the TV in the bedroom in the first place: men or women? Then we need some hard numbers as to which group experienced the turn-offs and turn-ons.

Is it the old Beta-wave problem?

There may be a bit of good news for population control advocates here. Ignoring for a moment the moral content of what is shown on TV, placing a television in the bedrooms of every couple on earth could significantly reduce population without otherwise violating the moral teachings of the great religions. (We said ignore the content!)

Of course the numbers could be explained by something as simple as people actually would rather watch TV than, er, make love. Doesn't sound right, but could it be true?