CHEAP SH*GGERS
THE Welsh are the stingiest lovers in Britain, a survey has revealed.
They are the most tight-fisted in the UK on Valentine’s Day, spending a paltry £28.20 on their partner.
Lovers from Cardiff and Swansea are the least likely to splash the cash on romantic gestures such as flowers or a meal.
In what is the first romance map of Britain, researchers found folk from Belfast and Northern Ireland are the most passionate, splashing out £40.74.
Big-hearted Geordies from Newcastle came second in the league table with folk from the north-east prepared to spend £40.46. And people from Leicester and the East Midlands showed romance is not dead with a date budget of £39.10.
London came fourth in the big spenders’ league with lovers in the capital prepared to splash £37.70 on a Valentine’s Day date.
Down in the bargain basement, people from the north west of the country, including Liverpool and Manchester, ran the Welsh close in the misers’ stakes, spending just £28.51.
Lovers in Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and Hull were the third most tight-fisted in Britain with the average spend per date in Yorkshire and Humber just £28.62. Researchers from social payments app Circle, which lets friends send and request money, asked 2,000 UK adults how much they spend on their Valentine’s Day date.
Folk from Norwich and Ipswich in East Anglia came fifth in the love league table with a spend of £32.22.
Scotland was sixth on £31.30, the southeast and West Midlands joint seventh on
£31.30 and the south-west eighth on
£29.08.
Researchers also found that Brits are first in the international first date cheapskates, spending an average of just £32.91 on taking a new partner out.
While Brits were at the bottom of the table, the French were runaway winners, spending £56.53. The Republic of Ireland came second on £52.59, the US third on
£45.31, Italy fourth on £45.16, Spain fifth on
£43.65 and Germany sixth on £42.25 ahead of the UK in seventh and last place.
And researchers found “going Dutch” is increasingly popular in the UK.
More than 60% of those surveyed saying a second date is more likely if the cost of the first date is shared.
Jack Collier, European marketing director at Circle, said: “It’s hard to put a price on finding love, but the journey there turns out to be no cheap ride.
“The stats for ‘going Dutch’ to land a second date is encouraging for equality in modern dating, and it also helps the bank balance too.”