Provisional statistics released late last year indicate that between 2 and 6 per cent of north-western Europeans are redheads, compared to an average of 1 or 2 per cent in the global population. But in the UK the numbers are much higher, with 13 per cent of Scottish people having red hair, 10 per cent of the Irish, and 6 per cent of individuals in England. Research at St Andrews University is under way to discover why Britain is the most red-headed part of the world. The main theory being pursued is that it is simply because our climate is a good deal cloudier than elsewhere and this, over thousands of years, has allowed light-skinned redheads to flourish.