The things you hear that really matter not one whit and life would have passed on without them, but you heard nevertheless, and now they won't leave you.

Agree that's a complicated and infelicitous sentence in a way, yet that's what happened to me this afternoon.

I overheard a young woman say to her two friends at the table next to mine outside Sheffield's Millennium Gallery cafe, perhaps flippantly, perhaps even seriously - could after all be a nugget that she'd picked up from a magazine lifestyle quiz - that almost 60% of all couples who visit IKEA are quarrelling by the time they reach lamp section. Bloodbath by the bulbs? Interesting.

It's got to be anecdotal, and if there was any empirical data available, I'd be whizzing it straight off to Ben Acre's Bad Science column in the Guardian hoping he'd slice and dice it on the dissection table.

Of course, the next time I'm in an IKEA, I'll be on alert by the time I reach the Lamps.