Thank you for downloading more or less from the BBC. This is the version of the

programme first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Halford.

Hello and welcome to more or less the programme which puts a bit of vava room in your statistical

life. This week are we still in recession but can't see that because we're mismeasuring GDP?

Alarming claims about how common rape is in Asia but what's really being counted? And

is Africa drunk? Oh, I've become probably the only source of relief. It has become a really

huge problem. But first, the comedian Tina Fey has been looking at her magazine collection.

The cover story of New York magazine this week is Baby Panic. This goes perfectly with the other

magazines on my coffee table. Where are the babies? Why haven't you had a baby? And for God's sake,

have a baby. That's from the US show Saturday Night Live back in 2002. It is of course possible

that some of those headlines weren't genuine, but this one is. It's from the Scotsman just this

week. Have babies by age 35 say experts. And so is this one from the mail. Pregnancy after 35 is

like an Iron Man challenge. Let me tell you the story of Jean Twengey, a professor of psychology at

San Diego University. Back when that edition of Saturday Night Live went out, Jean was having a

tough time. She was 30 years old and on the verge of a divorce. A few years later, she had found

love again. Hurrah! But Jean and her new husband wanted to have children and Panic quickly set in.

I read a lot of very scary statistics. And one in particular made her feel pretty desperate.

One out of three women over the age of 35 will not be able to get pregnant within a year.

So that means that after 12 months of trying to conceive naturally, only two-thirds of women

will have been successful. But Jean was determined to find out more. Where had that figure come from?

The data on which that statistic is based is from birth records, from 1700s France.

1700s France. Yeah, I mean the 16, 80s, 18, 10 or something like that.

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