Splashed out on a session with a prostitute or a line of cocaine recently? I’m asking in the interests of the national economy. No, really.

Because, if you believe the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, we average Brits spend more on prostitutes and illegal drugs than we do on wine and beer.

The ONS, which measures the bank balance of the UK, has changed the way it collects information.

It’s always kept a record of how much we splurge on wine, beer, cigarettes, food.

But as of the first quarter of this year and published now for the first time, it’s added a couple of new categories.

Now, it’s giving figures for the amount we Brits stump up on ‘narcotics’.

This is helpfully broken down (with typical government po-faced charm) into the following categories: heroine; cocaine (powder), cocaine (crack), amphetamines, ecstasy and imported and home-grown cannabis.

And even more out-there, the other new chart entry is ‘prostitution’, coyly listed under the category of ‘miscellaneous goods and services’.

So, in 2013, the ONS thinks we spent £12.5bn on illegal drugs and prostitutes versus just £12.0bn on wine and beer.

That includes £6.7bn on narcotics, or about £130 a year each.

Since out annual wine bill is £152 and our beer bill is £80, that’s interesting...

And we spent £5.8bn on prostitution last year, which works out at £230 a year per bloke.

Forget B&Q vouchers, you know what to get your man for Christmas this year.

This is pretty fascinating stuff but the best bit is how they collected the data.

It’s based on a study carried out more than 10 years ago in London, where they guessed the number of women on the game (including working the streets and escorts) and came up with a number between 3,000-6,000.

Then they asked a few London prostitutes questions about how many clients they had and how much they charged.

I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall for those moments, as a hapless researcher quizzed professional women about their day jobs.

Crunching the ONS figures, it seems they must have decided there are 12,000 prostitutes in the UK, all working 365 days a year, all charging £100 a session and all seeing 10 clients a day, every day.

Hmm. I’m not convinced about that one.

Also, they only did research in London, which is not typical of the rest of the UK and has more overseas visitors than anywhere else in the country.

Despite this, they seem to have assumed, strangely, that all the men paying for prostitutes were British.

That’s a bit like saying Amsterdam’s red light district is used only by locals living in Amsterdam.

Anyway, why is the Government deciding to try and add in the amount we spend on illegal drugs and prostitution?

Short answer is that it makes the economy look bigger.

Which brings me back to where I started with this. Size really does matter.

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