How Sober October could prove to be a bonus after all

With only just over a week to go for those of you who are embracing Sober October, news has emerged that it has not only been bad news for the Britain’s already beleaguered pubs and bars, it has also not been ideal for the nation’s love rats, either.

You see, for Britain’s cheats, a partner doing Sober October is the stuff of nightmares, according to a sobering new survey by the UK’s leading shaggers’ paradise, IllicitEncounters.com – who else?

Having prodded and probed 1,215 members on what changes they saw when their partner went, er, “dry” for a month, 59% said the worst part is that they now remember exactly what they were told – what time they said they’d be home, who they said they were with, and what they said about it the next morning.

And the trusty pub alibi has gone too. A whopping 62% say it no longer works, because nobody at home believes a four-hour session in the pub any more.

A clear-headed partner also notices the little things. Some 45% have been asked why they jumped in the shower the moment they walked through the door, and 40% have faced a grilling the next morning about something they’d already explained the night before.

So what’s a cheat to do? Apparently, the secret lies in taking a long lunch. Activity on the site between 10am and 4pm jumped 35% in the first fortnight of October compared with the end of September, while the evenings have gone quiet as a mouse. The affairs haven’t stopped. They’ve just moved to lunchtime.

Back in January, a third of members told the site that a booze-free month killed the spontaneity at home. Now it seems a dry spell causes even more trouble outside it.

Elaine (not her real name naturally), 43, from Leicester, said her husband has given up drinking for a month three years running. “It never bothered me before. This year it’s a nightmare. I used to say I was out with the girls and he’d be asleep by ten anyway. Now he’s up when I get in, and he remembers what I told him.”

IllicitEncounters.com sex and relationships expert Jessica Leoni said: “The drink was never really the point. What a shared bottle of wine on a Friday bought people was a partner who went to bed early and didn’t ask many questions on the Saturday morning. Take that away and you have somebody sitting up, clear-headed, who can repeat your own story back to you.

“Hardly anybody gets caught out by one enormous slip. They tell the story slightly differently the second time, and somebody is sober enough to spot it. That’s why the evenings go quiet every October and the daytime fills right up. Eleven in the morning is a lot easier to explain than one in the morning.”

But what has this all got to do with marketing? Well, if your boss has suddenly been taking long lunch breaks this month, the chances are he/she/they is a dirty cheater with a guilty conscience. Not that we are advocates of blackmail but, hey, now could, just could be a great time to ask for a pay rise…

Foxy has ditched X but is still on Instagram,  just don’t get too excited as she’s never there