A car alarm, car horn and the GoCompare song are among some of the most annoying sounds Brits have to put up with, according to a new survey.
In a list of the 50 most annoying sounds, snoring came out on top by a significant margin followed by loud chewing in second place, dog barking in third, running fingers down a chalkboard in fourth and loud slurping of a tea of coffee in fifth.
Cars seem to be a great source of audible misery, as having to put up with a car alarm came sixth, ahead of noisy motorbikes in seventh and people talking loudly on their mobile phones in eighth.
Ninth was the sound of a car running outside your house in the morning (something to look forward to in the winter months), knocking the sound of a crying baby into tenth place for annoyance.
Other motoring-based annoyances in the top 50 results, compiled by home appliance maker Whirlpool, includes road drills (11th place), the GoCompare song (21st, which seems generous if you ask us), squeaky brakes on a bike (41st) and car / bus horns (49th).
Other general annoyances include Justin Bieber’s Baby, at 29, Jimmy Carr’s laugh, at 33, Psy’s Gangnam Style, at 44, and dial-up modems, at 48. As if anyone still uses them?
Such is the dislike Brits have for annoying noises, the study found the average adult would pay £300 for one hour of silence, with men willing to pay £13 more than women. A pair of noise-cancelling headphones would work out better value for money, just saying.
In fact, 80 per cent of the 2,000 Brits surveyed said peace and quiet was important to them, which is no surprise when women admitted to being more likely to cry as a result of annoying noises. 17 per cent of men said they were unaffected by them.
Yet for our love of peace and quiet, a whopping 84 per cent said they spend less than ten minutes a day enjoying just that.
“Whether it’s the person next to you snoring all night long or your washing machine making a racket while you’re trying to watch TV, it’s surprisingly easy to get wound up by annoying sounds,” a Whirlpool spokesperson said.
”Unfortunately, many of the noises are part of our everyday life and in the environment where we live and there is little we can do to avoid them,” they added.
Whirlpool commissioned the survey to try and promote its National Quiet Day on the 14th of September, which it will undoubtedly use to highlight the fact it produces washing machines that are said to be some of the quietest on the market.
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