A NEW sleep study from Russia has found that as well as the familiar larks and owls there are two further categories of human being: the hyperactive and the super-indolent.

And the scientists’  findings suggest that there are more idlers in the world than strivers.

The researchers carried out various sleep experiments on a group of 135 people. They found that they 44 owls on their hands – people who function better later in the day – and 29 larks, that guilt-inducing band of early risers.

However, the scientists also found that 25 members of their group were awake and active all day long. Presumably this is the personality type that politicians and corporate lawyers belong to: the people who can’t understand that life is for enjoying and that lazing around doing nothing much is good for health and happiness.

There was a fourth group. These were the truly, deeply lazy. They never really woke up. And the startling thing is that there were more of the truly lazy than either larks or hyperactives: their group numbered 37.

So by my calculations, the anti-idlers – that is, the larks and hyperactives added together, 54, or 40% of the group.

And the idlers – or the owls added to the truly lazy – totalled 81, or a whopping 60% of the total sample.

If extrapolated out, these figures would suggest that three fifths of the world are natural born idlers.

I feel, then, we should be better represented in Parliament. But since none of our number can be bothered to stand as MPs, I’m afraid this is unlikely to happen. TH

ENDS