Ireland, Oz and NZ top world loneliness index

It's official: the good burghers of Dublin are the world's loneliest, narrowly beating Oz's Melbourne into second spot, with Auckland in NZ securing third place in the index of human misery and despair.

The irrefutable evidence which fingers these international sloughs of despond comes, natually, from the repository of all human knowledge - Google - and its indispensible trends labs which "aims to provide insights into broad search patterns":

Trend history - lonely:

1. Dublin, Ireland
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. Auckland, New Zealand
4. Sydney, Australia
5. London, United Kingdom
6. Perth, Australia
7. Vancouver, Canada
8. Brentford, United Kingdom
9. San Francisco, United States
10. Manchester, United Kingdom

Rather splendidly, and as anyone who's ever been there can attest, the UK's Brentford rates number eight in the nucleus of solitude top ten. Indeed, the thought of wretched temp secretaries and car mechanics sobbing quietly into their solitary Pot Noodles while contemplating another evening alone on front of the telly fair brings a tear to your eye.

Even more sadly for Brentfordians, there is no hope to be gleaned from an equivalent "happy" search. While Melbourne, San Fran and Sydney can boast a indexable number of happy souls to bring a little ray of sunshine into the darkness, Brentford is conspicuous by its absence from the list.

And the happiest place on Earth? Santiago in Chile, despite General Pinochet's stubborn refusal to do us all a favour and pop his clogs. ®

Bootnotes

Thanks to "hard-drinking student layabout" Matthew Wilkes for this unhappy tip-off.