I must confess to having read a story on one of the newspaper sites about the browsing stats published by a pornographic outlet called Pornhub. Apparently, the average Brit visits this site for just under 10 minutes a day if I understood it correctly which is just behind the US but significantly more than much of the rest of the world. Most revealing was the fact that a small town called Ware wins the award for most compulsive pornography viewing town in the UK. I have vaguely heard of Ware but that’s about it. Actually, the data, if you can stomach it, is pretty revealing. Apparently, what does for an American isn’t a Brit’s cup of tea and there appears to be a good deal of nationalism when it comes to search terms for porn! For example, ‘British’ is the top search term in England apparently.
There were one or two other surprises for me in this story. First, I have never heard of Pornhub – possibly we can all agree that’s a good thing but, even worse. is that for most British searchers on the site, the most popular search term is ‘Lisa Ann’. Really? Who the hell is Lisa Ann? Never heard of her either! Which I think really goes to show how celebrity status is so often a local thing and these people are more or less unknown elsewhere.
To make my point, who out there has heard of Karel Gott or Lucia Bila? Or, for that matter, Gabriela Partysova or Leos Mares? These are quite to very well known Czech celebrities who routinely, along with others, grace the covers and pages of the tittle tattle rags here. It always amazes me and my family when I am back in the UK for a visit and they are talking avidly about some celeb that I have never heard of. They look at me as if to say – How is that possible? Well, I guess celebrity, or notoriety (in the case of porn), is mostly a local thing.
I did do a little research on this Lisa Ann by the way as you might expect me to do in the interests of ensuring I am up to speed. Unimpressed. You stay at home Brits can keep her.