People calling to meet the lonely is the simplest, quickest and most cost-effective way of combating unwanted solitude, new research suggests.

Well, smack me across the face with a wet mackerel but is that an incredibly unexpected result?

So they isolate people by preventing them from driving the tractor to the pub and then not allowing them to have a quiet pint and a pipe-full and then they worry about loneliness?

They get two groups who describe themselves as lonely and then send volunteers for an hour once a week over three months to one group, while the other group are left to stew in their own misery.  Then [shock…  horror…] they discover that the groups who got the visits felt less lonely?  Well, but isn’t that an astounding turn up for the books?

Of course they fail to mention any details about the volunteers which I would have thought would have a bearing on the matter.

Were they nice nubile young women who weren’t averse to providing some little “extras”?

Or were they transition year students who spent the entire visit sulking in a corner, taking “selfies” and updating their Twitter accounts for the whole hour?

Are the victims given any choice in the matter?

“The public health message here is that loneliness is common, extreme loneliness is not uncommon, and we know there are significant mental health impacts of extreme loneliness. And here’s an intervention, by the community, that can make a difference.”

Fuck me but these “studies” have a great habit of discovering the blindingly obvious.