Illicit encounters aren’t the sort of topic normally raised on Phil Clarke’s Business blog, but a recent post reveals that people who have extra-marital affairs in the UK spend about 60 million pounds on cut flowers.
Apparently that amounts to over 2.5% of the £2.2bn fresh cut flower market, with men who take mistresses spending an average £120 a year on flowers. That compares with just £41 for those who are not having affairs.
He doesn’t say whether the flowers are for the wives or the mistresses, or both.
But he reckons the fact that the flower buying fence jumpers are typically “high-powered businessmen with a great deal of expendable income” rules out most farmers.