Golf rules in Britain's boards

Tennis is way behind golf in popularity

So the sitcom portrayals are accurate - Britain's boards are dominated by golf fanatics.

More directors cited the sport as their favourite hobby than any other occupation.

Tennis lagged behind in a poor second place, with just two-thirds as many supporters as golf.

The revelations came in a survey by Hemscott Company Guru, which questioned directors of companies in the FTSE 100 index of the UK's biggest firms.

Football ignored

The directors made no mention of whether their love of sport was confined to watching matches, or whether they themselves were players.

But while long golf days are a prominent part of corporate entertaining, corporate tennis in the UK is almost exclusively limited to Wimbledon tickets.

Football - widely believed to be the UK's favourite sport - did not figure in the top ten hobbies of company directors.

Only three directors described spending time with their families as a hobby.

Driving donkeys

Theatre and opera both clocked up a healthy score, with sailing and shooting slightly lower down the list of things to do in spare time.

Walking, gardening and travelling all cropped up in the top ten, but were near the bottom of the list.

And some directors came up with some rather unusual hobbies.

"Driving donkeys" was one of the more obscure hobbies listed; "communal educational activities" another.

And one well-known - and presumably well-off - board director cited "castle restoration" as a favourite way to spend a Sunday afternoon.