Picture the scene: you are in the pub, meeting a friend for a drink.

He walks in. "All right mate, how are things? How is the missus?" you ask. "Not good," he says. "She's left me. She said she couldn't live with my snoring." While you try to suppress laughter, he is on the verge of tears.

Sounds far-fetched? Well, think again. A recent survey has indicated that 49 per cent of those questioned admitted to being regular snorers.

Of their partners, 57 per cent regularly live with sleep loss, five per cent have stressful arguments with the snorer, and one per cent blame snoring for the breakdown of the relationship.

Recently, I was given the task of finding couples in York willing to engage in a spot of light-hearted banter about each other's snoring habits. Surely, if there were so many prolific snorers out there, it couldn't be too hard. How wrong I was.

I spent five hours tirelessly trawling the streets for couples prepared to own up to snoring.

The number of people with urgent appointments to get to was quite uncanny. It was almost as though they didn't want to talk to me.

A handful were willing to give a brief comment, but only on the basis they remained anonymous.

When I ventured to ask their names or dared to mention the possibility of a photo, they were off like a shot, suddenly remembering somewhere else they had to be.

I asked people in shops, on street corners and sitting on park benches, but no one would comply. Even a young couple in a pub who, judging by the array of empty glasses on their table, had clearly been there for some time, were still not sufficiently "at ease" to comment.

Only one couple and, at 21 years, probably in the age group most at risk of merciless banter from their friends and family, were prepared to be identified as self-confessed snorers. And their revelations were hardly damning. "We both snore, but it's bearable", the bloke said.

This reticence can be put down to only one thing - not the particularly dodgy shirt I was wearing at the time, but plain old embarrassment. People, it seems, are happy to walk into a pharmacy and buy a remedy - there are herbal sprays, non-herbal sprays, chin-up strips, oral strips, ear plugs and snoring rings - but they won't talk about it.

When even tanked-up twenty-somethings stop to consider the potential embarrassment their revelations might cause, and then decide it is just too great, you know the subject is a touchy one.

Towards the end of the day, such was my desperation to find willing couples, I even managed to mistake a brother and sister for boyfriend and girlfriend. They were not best pleased.

I called it a day after that.

Updated: 10:15 Thursday, May 04, 2006