Denis Kilcommons: Sharing a bath with Daniel Craig may not be that much fun

ONE of those silly surveys named Daniel Craig as the man with whom most women in the UK would like to share a bath.

David Beckham came second, followed by Gerard Butler, Gary Barlow and Prince Harry. The survey was to promote the January sale by Bathstore.

Apparently, sharing a bath with someone has been listed as one of the top five most romantic things you can do. It splashes in at number three. Going out for dinner is tops followed by a long walk. I wonder, some times, if people who organise these surveys – or answer the daft questions involved – have actually tried what they are suggesting.

Having a bath with someone is not comfortable. A bath is hard and unyielding and two adults attempting to sprawl in a normal sized tub is as erotic as having a canoodle in a one man submarine. Someone is bound to bang their head on the taps, the soap will inevitably get lost and think of the embarrassment if one of you got a toe stuck up a spout.

To make it anything like romantic, the bath needs to be large enough for limbs to float with carefree abandon and hair to spread on the water like a pre-Raphaelite painting. The only time I've shared a bath that size was with 10 other blokes after a football match. And that was not at all romantic. I'm happy to say.

According to the survey, a luxury hotel was the preferred location for sharing a bath. But this may not always be ideal, either.

Some years ago, my wife Maria and I stayed in just such an establishment in Wales. The hotel had its own helicopter pad, herb garden and chef with a pony tail, and we had the suite where Jacqueline Kennedy once stayed.

By heck, missus. That must have been a time when we had some money.

Maria decided to take full advantage of the jacuzzi. A short time later she shouted for me. Hello, I thought. Romance beckons. But she had dropped a bottle of bubblebath in the water and had disappeared beneath the foam that was threatening to reach the ceiling. I had to fiddle about to switch it off and pull the plug.

“Thank goodness,” she said. The spume began to subside but her hair was filled with such an abundance of effervescent froth that she looked like Marge Simpson. “I had visions of floating along the landing and down the stairs to reception,” she said.

So romance was out, then.

People who conduct surveys should take note: baths are made for bathing, not romance. Now showers ...