We were talking about 1981, though, so I excluded 3% of men, taking us to 4,755 candidates.
Formal studies come up with much lower figures, of about 3%, though these are likely to be underestimates – far higher rates are found among younger adults who have grown up with less stigma. There is little to support the commonly thrown-around figure that about one in 10 of the population is gay. While a bisexual man could still suit our pina colada-loving lady, a gay man sadly would not. There was more I could do to thin out this crowd. My count of men targeted by the advert dropped to 4,902. Of those, slightly less than half would be men: while more male babies are born than female, the male population in 1981 was still affected by the second world war and women live longer than men. About 21% of the population at the time were 15 and under, and about 18% were pensioners, leaving 10,430 working age adults. After eliminating women and children – we can assume our mystery ad was seeking a man – the census had the figures I needed. My starting point was the UK Census – a nationwide effort, every 10 years, in which every citizen is legally obliged to give the government information about themselves: their age, location and other demographic data.Įscape was released in 1979, only two years before the 1981 national census, according to which 17,098 people lived in the township of Northwich. Plus, the UK has much better archival data.įirst, I needed to know how many people might have seen the personal ad and how many might match it. I knew exactly why, living there, the lure of pina coladas and a fumble on a far-flung beach would be irresistible. I grew up a few dozen miles from Northwich. A pedant might note that Holmes moved to a suburb of New York as a child, but the song title – Escape – had always evoked smalltown England, at least to me. Given the absence of information to the contrary, I opted for Holmes’s hometown of Northwich, a small town in Cheshire dating back to Roman times. This was made slightly challenging by Holmes’s decision not to mention where the song is set at any point in the lyrics. My search for answers began with trying to work out how many people might be eligible for the song’s “lovely lady”. What if I applied my statistical skills to this question? OK, whether or not the pina colada couple would have answered each other’s ads – and then reconciled – might not be the most pressing issue on the planet, but as soon as the idea occurred, I found it hard to let go. I’ve spent the past decade as an investigative reporter, digging through the numbers behind everything from offshore financial records to the intelligence agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden. I wondered, what were the chances? 34% of men say they like making love on the beach and 34% like pina coladas. And when they uncover each other’s infidelity, they just laugh it off.
Not only does Holmes’s protagonist happen to see his girlfriend’s secret ad in a local paper, but he’s the first to see it and arrange a meeting (we can assume, because she’s still available). I am a data journalist and found it hard to get past the sheer unlikeliness of this sequence of events.
This story first maddened and then intrigued me. Rather than breaking into a flurry of mutual recrimination, they laugh at the coincidence and talk about all the interests they never knew they shared – including an affair, presumably. Despite this unusual time for a first date, she walks in – and, what do you know, it’s “his own lovely lady”. Our protagonist, deciding this description fits him perfectly, places a personal ad in response, suggesting they meet at a bar at noon. Any man matching these requirements, she says, should write to her “and escape”. She also, getting specific, wants someone who “likes making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape”. One ad catches his eye: a mystery woman is looking for a man who likes pina coladas, getting caught in the rain, who isn’t in to yoga, and “has half a brain”. So let me summarise: Holmes sings of being bored with his girlfriend, and reading the lonely hearts ads in bed as she sleeps next to him (we can leave aside the callousness of that until later). If, like me, you’re the sort of person who sings along to a song despite having only the vaguest grasp of the lyrics (“Na-na-na PINA COLADA!”), it’s possible the intricate plotline of Rupert Holmes’s hit has passed you by.
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