Exaggeration nation: Statistic of the day
Satirist Craig Brown of the Daily Mail has it for you:
A new biography of the film star Warren Beatty claims that he has been to bed with 12,775 women. The author adds, usefully, that the figure ‘does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on’
Thank goodness. Wait: “drive-bys?” How does that … never mind.
Brown notes, usefully, that this robust integer represents the equivalent of having relations with all of the women in the English villages of Dorking and Leatherhead combined, or all of the adult females in the town of Windsor — including, presumably, the residents of any castle therein.
Was ever a man more appropriately christened than Warren?
Brown was born in Middlesex, near the municipality of Prurience.
Of course, everyone wants to know how Beatty got so many notches in his belt, particularly since he is known to employ the floppiest of all come-on lines (reportedly: “What’s new, Pussycat?” to Joan Collins; “Houston, we have lift-off” to Madonna). But that’s the wrong question.
The real question is about Annette Bening, Beatty’s wife. The last time I saw Beatty on TV, he had less the look of a rogue stallion undertaking his eighteenth casual grope of the afternoon, and more the look of a retired bus driver searching the living room for his slippers — you know, the ones cousin Alice sent from Topeka the Christmas before last.
What has that woman done? Inexplicably, the world has been made safe for number 12,776.
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Let’s do some math. Beatty was born in 1937. Let’s say he started having sex with women when he was 14. It could have been earlier or later, but let’s just say 14. So he started having sex in 1951. He married Annette Bening in 1992.
Assuming that he has been faithful since marrying her, that leaves 41 years in which to have sex with 12,775 women. (Even if he were not faithful to her — and I have not heard anything to suggest that he has not been — surely his pace during the years since 1992 is not statistically significant, unless he’s been cheating at Tiger Woods’ pace. I am going to give Beatty the respect of assuming that he isn’t a serial cheater.)
So, 41 years. 12,775 women. Different women. Having sex with the same woman twice doesn’t count toward the total. Any relationships, the time with Madonna, any sex with the same person, each of those count only once.
41 years is 14,965 days, Divided by 12,775 means that in order to have had sex with that many women, Beatty would have had to have sex with a different woman nearly every day for 41 years (every 1.1715285 days, but we can round it off to almost one every day). Every single day. From the age of 14 to the age of 55. Granted, there are days when Beatty could have had sex with two or three different women, maybe more. So maybe that would make up for the days when he had the flu, or was having sex with only the same woman for a two-week stretch.
According to Wikipedia, “Beatty has had several high-profile relationships with his costars, including Natalie Wood (Splendor in the Grass), Julie Christie (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait), Diane Keaton (Reds), Isabelle Adjani (Ishtar’) and Madonna (Dick Tracy).” I don’t know if these relationships were exclusive or if Beatty was faithful during these times, but one would think they at least slowed down his pace and threw off the one-per-day shag with a new woman that the 12,775 total requires.
My conclusion: Beatty probably had sex with lots of women. 12,775 sounds too high.
Spoilsport.
No way averaging a different woman, everyday, for FORTY-ONE years is feasible, even if he threw the lulls off with an occasional wild 30 woman gang bang orgy.
Truthfully, on the surface the idea of a different woman everyday for 41 years may sound appealing to some, I think the repetition of continual strangers would lose its luster.