By TIM WARDLE

Last updated at 21:55 10 November 2007

The average British person drinks three cups of tea a day, believes in God, is more than £3,000 in debt, has sex eight times a month, is caught on CCTV camera 300 times a day and drives a Ford Fiesta.

At least that's what the statistics tell us. But who is this Mr - or Mrs - Average?

Do they exist in the real world? What do they look like? Where do they live? And what can they tell us about the state of our country in the 21st Century?

Earlier this year, I spent three months trying to track down the average Briton for a Channel 4 documentary.

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During my odyssey into all that is average about Britain today, I discovered the average body shape, visited the most average town, garnered the opinions and concerns of the average person and met a surprising number of people who were happy to describe themselves as average.

What I found challenged my prejudices about averageness and made me re-evaluate my own life and values.

I began my quest by collecting every statistic that I could find about the average Briton. These ranged from the serious (the average Briton is overweight) to the amusing (the average British male spends one month of his life looking for lost socks) to the downright pointless (the average Briton says 'sorry' an incredible 1.9million times in a lifetime).

"Lies, damned lies and statistics," goes the saying, and I steered clear of the swathe of fictitious claims circulating on the internet.

My personal favourite: "The average person swallows eight spiders a year while asleep."

My figures came from a variety of sources, ranging from the Office for National Statistics to market-research surveys.

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Using this data as a guide, I set off to track down Mr Average.

I began by trying to work out what the average Briton looks like.

Using key physiological statistics - for example, the average man is 5ft 91/2in tall and the average woman has a 36C bust - I constructed white plywood outlines of the average British male and female body shapes and took them out to compare with shoppers on London streets.

The reaction was mixed.

Most people were shocked that the average Briton is so large but several women were thrilled to discover that they were smaller than the average size 16.

My statistics told me that the average person would most likely be married, own their own home and have two children (1.8 is average, down from 2.4 in the Eighties).

So I travelled across the country tracking down potential candidates.

But every time I thought I'd found Mr or Mrs Average, they revealed something about themselves that was annoyingly unaverage.

There was the Army wife from Surrey who matched many of my criteria and was about to turn 40 - the average age in Britain today.

Unfortunately, when I attended her birthday party and questioned her friends, I discovered that her pastimes included running marathons, skydiving and riding her Harley-Davidson. Hardly average behaviour.

There was the couple in Wigan who, along with their two children, were looking for a house close to the average price of £200,000.

Frustratingly, it emerged that he was self-employed and ran a successful business from home.

I had high hopes for the school caretaker from Dartford who earned close to the median wage of £23,556 and claimed he drove a car so average that he regularly could not find it in supermarket car parks.

Frustratingly, his car turned out to be a Vauxhall Zafira.

I knew from my research that Britain's most statistically average car is the Ford Fiesta. Another dead end.

The Kaiser Chiefs might have had a hit with the song Everything Is Average Nowadays.

But I wasn't so sure. In the age of X Factor, Big Brother and YouTube, it sometimes seems as if everyone wants to be different, special or famous.

But does constantly striving for success and recognition make us any happier than average?

Ben Page, chairman of the Ipsos-Mori Social Research Institute, told me: "Our society is now much richer than it was 30 years ago but absolutely no happier.

"There is some evidence to suggest that people who are average and are content with what they have will be happier than those of us who are always striving for more."

I certainly wasn't happy - my hunt for Mr Average was going nowhere.

I decided to narrow the search to one particularly average part of the UK.

I visited a company called CACI, which specialises in a technology called geodemographic profiling. Given any UK postcode, CACI can tell you what type of people are likely to live there.

Using a range of criteria from house size to car ownership, CACI calculated that the most average UK postcode is CO4 - the northern part of Colchester in Essex.

So I spent days traipsing around its average-looking cul-de-sacs in the rain, knocking on doors and posting flyers in an attempt to find someone who would match all of my criteria.

Apart from having the odd door slammed in my face - "Average? Are you taking the p***?" - I met some fantastic people in Colchester.

But none of them was average enough.

They were either the wrong age, shape, had the wrong number of children or drove the wrong car.

By this point, I was on the verge of giving up.

But then others began to pick up on my search for the average Briton.

Several national newspapers printed a list of 20 questions that I had drawn up to help me identify Mr Average.

These included: Are you married with two children? Do you know the words to God Save The Queen? Do you consider yourself working-class? Do you go to the toilet six times a day? The truly average Briton will answer "yes" to all.

Over the following week, I was inundated with responses from people, each convinced that they were the average Briton.

But one call stood out from the rest - a woman from Swindon called Michelle was certain that her husband, Peter Williamson, matched virtually all of my criteria.

Swindon may not be as average as north Colchester but it is renowned among market-research experts as one of Britain's most average towns.

They even use it to conduct focus groups for their new products because residents' views accurately represent those of the wider UK population.

As I approached the Williamson family's home on the outskirts of Swindon, the signs looked good.

The quiet, new housing development was reassuringly average. Better still, parked outside their house was a silver Ford Fiesta.

With my heart pounding, I knocked on the door. The man who opened it was wearing an England football shirt and listened calmly as I excitedly tried to explain my search for the average Briton.

He invited me in for a cup of tea.

It soon became apparent that Peter was everything I'd been looking for.

A married father of two, he is a Fiestadriving office worker who has 14 close friends, size 10 feet, knows the words to God Save The Queen, considers himself working-class and goes to the toilet six times a day. He matched virtually all of my criteria.

Peter's philosophy on averageness chimed with what I'd learned during my journey.

"If you spend all your time trying to achieve instead of looking at what you've got and being happy with it, it can destroy you," he said.

"Whereas if you've got a loving family and are content with your life - even if you haven't achieved greatness - then you'll be happy."

When I began my search for Britain's Mr Average, I could not imagine anything worse than being labelled average.

But the more I spent time with Peter, his lovely wife Michelle and their two boys Tyler, nine, and Kieran, five, the more I realised that, far from being dull and boring, averageness could be a recipe for contentment.

Over dinner, I announced to Peter that I believed him to be my Mr Average.

He was amused and took it in very good grace, saying it made him proud to be British.

As I said my farewells, Peter reassured me that the title would not change him.

"Don't worry," he said.

"You're not going to see me on next season's Big Brother."

I've thought a lot about what I learned on my journey.

It seems that those of us who spend our lives obsessing about success and money and fame could learn much from people such as Peter Williamson.

Perhaps he knows something we don't.

Perhaps we should celebrate the average in all of us.

• Tim Wardle's documentary, First Cut: In Search Of Mr Average, will be shown on Channel 4 on November 23 at 7.30pm. First Cut is a new documentary series featuring up-and-coming directors.