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The average man will, apparently, spend seven years of his lifetime in the bathroom.

Who is this average man? And why is he timing his bathroom visits?

I’m certainly not average. I don’t spend two hours in the smallest room every day like this average man must to rack up his whopping total.

I’m more of a 30-minute man, meaning I’ll end up in the bathroom for a meagre 21 months, which is admittedly still quite a while to spend in a room without a telly.

So how will I spend the rest of my 79 years? (79 being the average lifespan of a man in south-east England. It’s 83 years for women. In the north west it’s 77 for men and 81 for women, in Scotland it’s 75 and 80 respectively).

If I’m not busy in the bathroom, where will I be for those spare five and a half years while average man scrubs himself silly?

Well, in the name of quality research, I decided to time myself doing all the things I fill my life with and can now present some authentic data.

Let’s deal with sleep right away. I’m good at sleeping, it’s one of the things I’m best at.

In fact, I’m planning on spending at least a third of my lifetime asleep.

That’s more than 26 years lying under a blanket with my eyes shut. If it wasn’t so cosy, I might think I’m wasting my time on this earth.

But according to some proper scientific research, about 20% of my sleep is REM sleep, and it’s during this time we dream.

So I’m going to spend more than five years of my life dreaming.

Bearing in mind that I have some adventurous dreams, that, I think, is an excellent use of a life.

For five years I’ll be flying, leaping, and, more often than not, heroically defending a castle from marauding Vikings.

When I wake up I’m hungry, understandably. I make myself breakfast.

That takes a year of my life before I gobble it down in just four months. It’s the same story for the rest of my meals.

It takes me three times as long to make food as it does to eat it.

Plus there’s the three years I spend washing up. No wonder people are turning to takeaways.

It’s going to take me another two years to get dressed. I think shoelaces should be banned to improve our lives.

Come on people, we’ve got Velcro now.

I have to spend at least 45 minutes a day talking on the phone – that’s about two and a half years conversing with people I can’t see, and at least four hours a day staring at my computer, writing, researching and, predominantly, finding different ways to avoid writing or researching.

I reckon I’m going to spend well over six years of my life on YouTube watching Charlie biting his brother’s finger and Fenton’s owner chasing Fenton chasing deer.

So now I’m up to about 50 years, with a mere 29 still to fill.

Being a fairly lazy comedian, I spend about six hours a week in the car, so that’s another three years of my life taken care of.

Then, if I do three shows a week, I’ll be spending a whole year on stage, trying to make people laugh.

Even if I get a couple of decent laughs every minute, they’ll still only be laughing for a few weeks of that year.

Eleven and a half months grinding away for a fortnight of laughter. Is it worth the effort?

The rest, as far as I can work out, is leisure time. I watch TV for an hour a day, or three and a half years a life, and I occasionally play sport, but only for a total of six months at most.

I’ve worked out I’ll spend another pleasant three years reading and in cinemas, restaurants, and cafes.

Less pleasant is queueing. Our average man will be held in a queue for at least four years of his life. Not just one long queue, thankfully; he’ll be stuck in traffic, and on hold on the phone, as well as on foot.

As an aside, he’s also going to spend six months opening jars.

The man’s an idiot. If he combines the two, unscrewing while queueing, he’ll save some serious time.

I’m barely going to spend a year moving around on my own two feet. Is that a waste of my body?

Sure, lying down can be more fun, but it’s worth pointing out I’ll also be having sex for less than a month and kissing for scarcely a fortnight. The rest of the time I’m either sedate or prostrate.

All in all, this means I’ve got about seven years unaccounted for.

The average man might spend seven years in the bathroom, but I’m going to be spending seven years looking out of the window, doing virtually nothing.

Which, to be honest, sounds pretty good.

In fact, I should get back to it. I need to put the hours in.

* Alex Horne is performing Seven Years in a Bathroom nationwide, beginning at the Soho Theatre on March 12. See www.alexhorne.com