Which would you prefer to receive: a declaration of love or a gift of £163,424?

It's OK. Don't feel bad. There is a recession on. Anyone might have said the same.

In fact, according to impressively scientific-sounding organisation BrainJuicer, these two offers are exactly equivalent. Having polled 1,000 British people on the happiness inspired by "significant life events", researchers compared their findings to the contentment brought on by lottery wins, then calculated that hearing the words "I love you" brought precisely £163,424 worth of pleasure.

If you are a generous-spirited person, therefore, you should really make the effort to shout "I love you!" at least once today. (Unless, of course, you are a working prostitute. That would be negative economics, causing a large likely drop in future earnings.)

The study found that good health is worth £180,105 on the happiness scale. That's a terrific sum; just think how many fags you could buy with it.

Going on holiday is worth £91,759. Be sure to remember that in a fortnight's time, when you are shrieking: "I spent £750 on this hellhole, you thieving bastard" at a recalcitrant travel agent. £91,759 is the fair price, eh? I shall certainly be inviting these BrainJuicer people to rent my flat for the summer. I might even do them tea in the morning.

Making love equates to £105,210 - better news for our hard-working prostitute - although researchers point out that this is worth less than the £108,021 value of laughing regularly. Then again, looking at some of the people who actually frequent prostitutes, it should be possible for our girl to do both at once.

This gripping survey was commissioned by Steve Henry, author of You Are Really Rich: You Just Don't Know it

"People are looking for something to replace money as a general criterion for value," explains Mr Henry. "The book is about a new alternative to a purely financial system."

Well, it isn't, is it? It just takes a lot of nice things and shoves them into a financial system. Nevertheless, you must have enjoyed that paragraph from Steve Henry because "reading is worth £53,660". Go on, treat yourself; read it again.

But the truly telling nugget, buried in this list of life values, is that "being in a stable relationship" is worth £154,849.

And this is based on a real survey of real people. Can you see what's weird about it? What's weird is that hearing "I love you" is worth £163,424. That means we believe, to the unarguable tune of £8,575, that a happy and stable relationship is not as valuable as a random romantic declaration. The words are worth more than the actions. We'd be quicker to invest in the fly-by-night, silver-tongued gigolo than the solid, faithful guy who forgets to talk like Julio Iglesias.

At last, we are able to put an exact price on the inherent masochism of the human race: £8,575: that is what we'd pay to be told we are loved by someone who is offering nothing and doesn't really mean it.

Sick, we are all sick. Those words bring nothing but pain and yet we beg for it. "I love you", without the stability, is exactly what we shouldn't want to hear. We might just as well accord a positive financial value to hearing these statements:

"The postal strike will begin on Friday morning": £2,800.

"Outlook for the weekend: rain": £6,570.

"There seems to be a problem with your card ...": £34,312.

"Please listen carefully to the following selection. If you are calling about a fault with your service, press 3 ...": £487,060.

"Screw you!": £37.50.

That last one was a trick. Swearing actually is demonstrably beneficial, according to scientists in a different preposterous news story entirely. Psychologists at Keele University have found that obscenity is good for us. Fuck me, who'd have thought?

Their research involved asking 64 students to plunge their hands into a tub of iced water. If the students swore constantly, they could keep their hands submerged for an average of two minutes. But if they shouted ordinary words that they would use to describe a table, they could tolerate the ice for only one minute and 15 seconds. Therefore, swearing reduces pain and promotes good feeling.

I'm no boffin, but I can spot a flaw in these tests. "Words that they would use to describe a table"? What are these words? Flat? Brown? Flat? (Here I demonstrate my dazzling professional vocabulary. I would not expect young students, their brains presumably addled by weed and stress and too many episodes of Cash in the Attic, to come up with quite so many clever and colourful adjectives.)

No wonder their tolerance went down, if they had simultaneously to freeze their hands and work out how to describe a table. What if one of the students, desperately running out of interesting ways to talk about furniture, shouted: "Wooden, badly constructed and shittingly wonky?" What would that do to the pain scale? Would it count?

But those are just my own unscientific quibbles. Thanks to Dr Richard Stephens, research leader, it is now official: shouting balls or bum is a Good Thing for the human race. And if you think about it, that is empirically true. There are many situations in which a few noisy profanities do, somehow, make one feel better.

So where does that leave us, as we set off for our social Sunday lunches or our quiet afternoons with nearest and dearest? Conversation has moved on since the days when Eliza Doolittle was advised to discuss only the weather and everybody's health.

There is surely only one conclusion from these twin scientific findings. You should tell a random acquaintance that you love him, because he will feel good immediately. Then scream foul abuse into his face, and so will you.

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