Who needs enemies?

I was shocked to learn this week that the affable, tech-savvy Japanese have the least number of online friends, a study from research firm TNS has found.

The Digital Life report, launched earlier this month, finds that social networkers in the land of the rising sun have, on average, a paltry 29 friends. Tanzania is next in the Billy No-Mates scale with 38 online friendships, on average, followed by South Korea with a marginally more respectable 50.

At the other end of the scale, Malaysians are positively overrun by virtual buddies - 233 of them, to be precise. Brazilians are a very close second with 231, with Norway in third on 217.

Other baffling stats include the revelation that almost nine in 10 Chinese people have posted to a blog or forum, compared to 51 per cent of Brazilians and just 32 per cent of US citizens.

People in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam are happy to plaster their face all over the internet, with about nine in 10 having uploaded photos to social networks or sharing sites.

It's a good job no one from those countries has ever attended the Dodgi office Christmas party, or there could have been a lot of red-faced people round here. Not to mention a few employment tribunals into the bargain.