When I was 18, two related things happened.

One day myself and a friend were stopped on Grafton St by a woman with a clipboard and asked if we would mind stepping into a bar and tasting beers for a survey. We did. And there was no catch: we did not, for instance, end up being drugged and stripped of our internal organs.

Then, shortly after that, I was asked to eat an experimental type of Moro and tell a researcher whether it I liked new Tuna-Flavoured Moro (my memory is hazy on the detail) or preferred original Moro.

Since then: nothing. No surveys. No questions. Only a couple of censuses, which don’t count because it’s illegal not to answer the questions. And online polls, which don’t count for anything.

And yet, every day I open the papers and see a new survey reported. Sometimes two. Often, half a dozen. That 30 per cent of Irish men use hair straighteners, say. Or that the Irish average eight sexual partners in their life. Or that the Irish will spend more than anyone else this Christmas. Or that the iPod is our favourite invention of modern times. Or countless other headline grabbing results that surveys have thrown up.

I’ve not been asked any of these questions. I have not opened the paper and known, say, that I am among the 43 per cent of people who answered that Mount Everest is in Longford.

Have you ever been asked? If so, what did they ask you?

Do you know anyone who actually asks the questions? “Hi, I’m from a market research company. How many people have you slept with?”

Does this count as a survey?