. . . on best music for making love.

It’s the season of elections, so why should the much-vaunted middle class have all the fun? Lovers have rights too. So let’s see what sort of music you romantic fools out there are listening to.

And the winner is (insert drum roll here) the soundtrack from Dirty Dancing. Something of a puzzler, right? Are the ladies imaging a tryst with hunky Patrick Swayze, noble savage? Is the uber flexible Jennifer Grey a siren for the guys out there? Better questions — how old were the “lovers” who were surveyed? 80?

You might well believe I am right on the age when you hear the runners up: Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing and Bolero. You heard it right, folks. Bolero. From “10”, the 30-year-old movie featuring Bo Derek pracing around in corn-rows and not much else. Has anyone under the age of 50 ever seen this movie?

Apparently so. The survey included 2,000 people aged 18-91. I’d love to see a breakdown of how many people under 50 are putting Bolero on their stereos, er, iPods before jumping into the sack. I’d also be interested in knowing how many 80- and 90-year-olds out there are spinning the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing during their romantic trysts.

The most amazing tidbit in this whole story is the survey itself, conducted as it was by a “musical psychologist” (not kidding) from the University of London. Really? These are people to whom we pay tens of thousands of dollars to educate our children. Instead they go off and do surveys to disccover that “men are more likely than women to change their music tastes . . . to ensure success in the bedroom.”

Wow! There’s an eye-opener for you. Glad we got that settled. My suggestion for Herr Professor’s next survey: Find out how many people already knew that.

For some genuine romance and a little sex, check out my book, Holding Out for a Hero at http://www.crimsonromance.com/mari-manning/