Meet Mr Average

Men are leaving it until they are 30.5 to marry for the first time. (In 1961, the average man tied the knot at 25.6). Since the peak in 1970, the number of first marriages for men has almost halved, from 401,000 in 1970 to 205,000 in 1999. If it's not for the first time, the average age a man gets married is 32.0.

MARRIAGE

Men are leaving it until they are 30.5 to marry for the first time. (In 1961, the average man tied the knot at 25.6). Since the peak in 1970, the number of first marriages for men has almost halved, from 401,000 in 1970 to 205,000 in 1999. If it's not for the first time, the average age a man gets married is 32.0.

The age at which the average man will have a child is 30.1 (compared with 27.7 in 1980).

Grooms are on average two years older than their brides.

LIFE AND DEATH

He will live until he is 75.4 years old (compared with 71.0 in 1981). British men have the 14th longest lifespan of males around the world.

The most likely cause of death is from circulatory disease, which includes heart disease and stroke. The risk of a heart attack is higher on Mondays than any other day of the week.

The average cremated man's ashes weigh 9lb.

MONEY

The average working man in full-time employment earns £490.50 per week. That's £26,389 per year. In 2000, men in full-time employment worked an average of 40 hours a week.

The average man spends £110.10 on leisure of which £22.30 goes on drink and cigarettes. He will spend £690 on Christmas festivities, according to a Barclaycard poll.

SEX AND LOVE

The average man buys a reconciliation gift seven times a year to heal romantic rifts. The total British bill for making up to loved ones is £13bn a year.

The average man's most popular subject is sport, next comes work. Then politics and economics, or disputes about abstract ideas, such as How The World Began.

The average man has eight sexual partners before settling down. Men claim to have had double the number of sexual partners to women– on average 11.5.

On average, the British have sex 110 times a year. And the average man thinks about sex 20 times a day.

TELEVISION

The average man watches EastEnders, followed by A Touch of Frost, Coronation Street, Heartbeat and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. He reads The Sun newspaper and reads lifestyle magazines such as FHM, or TV guides, whereas in the 1980s he was reading Reader's Digest and magazines about cars, such as Custom Car and Hot Car.

SMOKING AND ALCOHOL

Male smokers smoke on average 104 cigarettes a week. In 2000, 15 per cent of smokers had their first cigarette within five minutes of waking up.

In 2000, the average man consumed 17.4 units of alcohol per week, which is the equivalent of around nine pints of beer. *

FEARS

The crime that the average man fears most is the theft of his precious car – 75 per cent of all households have at least one car.

TRAVEL

He travels an average of 9,185 miles per year, and makes an average of 1,104 journeys each year.

TIME USE

The average time per day a man watches TV or listens to the radio is two hours and 59 minutes;

gardening and DIY, 58 minutes; cooking/housework, 45 minutes; shopping, 26 minutes. Men still spend more time on once traditional male activities such as gardening and DIY.

Mr average's favoured fitness regime is walking. His favourite sport is snooker or pool. Apparently, the average man talks far less than women – he utters around 2,000 words a day.

COSMETIC

The average man owns 22 pairs of socks, 15 casual tops, 16 pairs of underpants and six pairs of casual trousers. The only item that men appear to purchase with confidence is underwear.

A recent survey commissioned by FHM magazine found that male spending on grooming products has doubled in the past three years, and the average man is now spending £576 a year on gels, creams and lotions, double the amount that they spent three years ago.

BODY

He will shed 600,000 particles of skin every hour. By the age of 70, an average person will have lost 105lb of skin.

Beards are the fastest-growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would apparently grow to nearly 30ft long in his lifetime.

During the average man's lifetime, he will eat about 60,000lb of food – the weight of more than six elephants. An average man uses the bathroom six times per day.

The average man has grown an inch taller and has gained two inches on his chest and his waist. The average 20-year-old is now 5ft 10in tall, his chest is 40in, his feet are size 10, and he has a 35in waist. A typical 40-year-old man is 5ft 9in tall, with a 40in chest and 35in waist. By 60, the same man is likely to be 5ft 8in tall, with a 40in chest and a 36in waist.