Are 4% of young women in the UK on OnlyFans?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news, and in life. This week:
We debunk a false claim that the hotel bill for immigrants is the size of the tax bill for Manchester.
An article in the Spectator claimed that 4% of women aged between 18 and 34 in the UK are OnlyFans creators. We track down the source and discover that it is not very good.
Do people in Scotland use much more water than people in Yorkshire? If so, why?
And we examine a popular claim that today’s working mothers spend more time with their children than your stereotypical 1950s housewife did.
Make sure you get in touch if you’ve seen a number you think Tim and the team should take a look at. The email is [email protected]
Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Josephine Casserly Producers: Nicholas Barrett, Lizzy McNeill and David Verry Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What is love? |
| 0:03.0 | Is it chemistry, fate or a disaster waiting to happen? |
| 0:07.0 | Sometimes you mistake other things for love. |
| 0:10.0 | Join me, Ryland, on my new podcast as I ask experts and a few familiar faces what love really means. |
| 0:16.3 | Because it turns out it's a bit more complicated than happily ever after. |
| 0:20.7 | You should think of it as the daily commitment you make to someone that you care about. |
| 0:25.2 | Ryland, how to be in love. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.1 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:35.2 | Hello and welcome to more or less with me, Tim Harford. We're brought to you courtesy of the |
| 0:41.2 | licence fee, although we are pondering setting up an only-fans account. Apparently everyone's |
| 0:46.8 | doing it. More on that story later. We'll also examine a popular claim that today's working |
| 0:53.0 | mothers spend more time with their children than your stereotypical 1950s housewife did. |
| 0:59.3 | And do people in Scotland use much more water than people in Yorkshire? |
| 1:04.3 | If so, why? |
| 1:06.5 | Surely it's not a porridge versus pudding thing. |
| 1:08.7 | But first, loyal listener Matthew Jones emailed |
| 1:12.9 | more or less at BBC.co.uk. I saw this statistic on the front page of the sun today. Surely this |
| 1:19.8 | can't be true. Here is the headline. Insane. 4.7 billion pound migrant hotel bill takes |
| 1:27.3 | every penny in tax from city size of Manchester. |
| 1:31.4 | That's insane with two ends, by the way. You know, in, as in no room at the inn. It doesn't really work on the radio. |
| 1:38.9 | So two claims there, one about hotels, one about the geography of taxes. And we should start by saying that |
| 1:45.7 | despite the use of the word migrant, this isn't about immigrants in general, but about people |
... |
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