A poll of UK adults by the airline Monarch has found that more than half would prefer to find themselves sat next to a British royal on the chairlift rather than one of eight other people suggested, including politicians and reality TV stars.
Prince Harry was the most popular choice taking more than a third of the vote with 37%, with his brother’s Royal sister-in-law Pippa Middleton the second most popular choice with 13%.
Prime Minister David Cameron was the third most desirable ski lift partner apparently, with 12% of the votes but reality TV stars were much less popular with the ski set with Kim and Kanye getting only 0.6% of the vote.
The survey also found that British skiers are a friendly lot with almost two thirds (60%) happy to start a conversation with their fellow ski lift passengers. A further 32% will join in a conversation if spoken to, and only 8% refuse to engage in a ski lift chit-chat.
Although the most popular conversation topics are the quality of the skiing on offer (43%) and the weather (27%), some more unusual ski lift small talk was reported, including why snails come out when it rains, frozen nasal hair and Latin American rap music.
However, despite being happy to engage in conversation with fellow ski lift users, one in five Brits (20%) would still let a spare seat go to avoid having to sit with a stranger.
Etiquette is still very important to Brits on the slopes – over a third (34%) of those polled placed the British as the most polite nation on the slopes, well ahead of second-placed Austrians (17%) and the Swiss (15%). Passing dangerously was considered the worst breach of slope etiquette (30%) ahead of queue jumping (14%) and being drunk on the piste (13%).