A while back I joined the FHM mailing list in order to enter some contest they were running. A few weeks ago I filled in a survey - you got entry into a draw for Amazon vouchers for doing it - and they asked if I wanted to be on a panel where I would get sent occasional surveys, each of which has this same draw element. They take about 10 minutes and I figure someone has to win these things. And anyway, as irresponsible as this may sound, ever since I fabricated statistics when working for the Metropolitan Police I've liked contributing to surveys to try and help them be as ill-informed and pointless as they unquestionably are. These FHM ones are perfect for that. I am so not the demographic for which FHM is aiming, which judging by their e-mails is the XBox-playing, binge-drinking, income-disposing 18 to 25 year old, that all of their surveys ask me about stuff about which I know absolutely nothing.

The latest one started by asking me how interesting I think the idea is of them getting people to say which artists have influenced their taste in music. I had to say whether I was intrigued to hear what shaped the tastes of musicians, general celebrities, members of the public or "other". Why on earth would anyone care what shaped the taste of members of the public? Or for that matter general celebrities, whoever they are - probably people like the woman I flicked through on Channel 4 this morning on some Big Brother offshoot programme, who when asked by the sub-Russell Brand host whether she would like to see two of the contestants on the cover of a magazine in loincloths asked "What's a loincloth again?" Are people not capable of formulating their own taste in music without having the reassurance that some cast member of Hollyoaks agrees with them?

The survey got better when I had to rate the following brands on a range of 1 to 10 from Completely Outdated to Extremely Innovative.

Nokia
FCUK
Samsung
Peugeot
Ford
Renault
Carphone Warehouse
Orange
Xbox 360
Fiat
O2
Sony Ericsson
Facebook
Virgin
Adidas

If you had to make a list of brands which better reflected the aspects of modern living in which I have no interest, you could hardly have made a better job. I don't drive, I don't own a mobile phone, I don't play computer games. There is barely a man alive in Britain today less appropriate to make these judgements than I am. I merrily dotted away all over the screen, my wantonly ignorant clicking hopefully causing great confusion to some London-based media focus group. I decided that Peugeout is Completely Outdated and Adidas Extremely Innovative. Who knows why? I know I don't. Then I had to do the same in other (apparently different) categories: Uncool to Very Cool (Ford is Uncool, Orange is Very Cool), Hate It to Love It (Hate FCUK, Love O2), and finally - it's almost as if FHM are reading my mind - I had to rate them all from Irrelevant To My Life to Completely Relevant To My Life. If I were being honest, I would mark every single one as being irrelevant. But the purpose of this survey is not accuracy, and thus while I so don't care about Virgin I am passionate about Carphone Warehouse.

The only area where I told the truth is when they asked me how my spending on eating out and holidays had been affected by the credit crunch. I could honestly click "It isn't an area of expenditure that I am looking to cut down on", given that it's hard to spend less than nothing.