By BBC News Online's Ryan Dilley

Where can you guarantee to hear chit-chat about clothes and personal grooming, home improvements and family life?

At a mothers' coffee morning? In the supermarket checkout queue? Well, no.

Together with local gossip, these topics are the staple of men's conversations down the pub, according to a new survey.

A hundred bar staff in the UK were asked to eavesdrop on discussions between male customers.

It appears that wallpaper paste, deodorants and the relative merits of cotton and polyester mixes are far more pressing issues for men than flash cars.

Even football debates, long thought to be the keystone of inter-male relationships, only manage mid-table respectability in the poll.

Sex languishes at the bottom of the conversation league - dangerously close to the relegation zone.

Mick Cooper, an expert in masculinity from Brighton University, says such findings are not wholly unexpected.

"There is a myth that men are only interested in sex - a myth which is promoted by men's magazines."

Mr Cooper warns that you cannot believe all you read about what occupies men's thoughts.

"It's not surprising that on an everyday level men's concerns are actually more mundane. We are not the super-sexed beasts we're supposed to be.

"This survey seems to reveal the soft underbelly of masculinity," reckons Mr Cooper.

Clinical psychologist Tina Baker suggests there is another good reason sex may not figure greatly in men's bar room chatter.

"If men talk about sex it's in a different way to women. They will discuss it jokily, relying on sexual innuendo," she says.

It would seem that once such banter is exhausted, men are reluctant to delve further into the topic.

"Sex is a very sensitive and individual issue. Men frequently find it difficult to discuss such serious issues and emotions, especially in somewhere like a pub among their peers."

Oxford University's Professor Nicholas Emler, whose forthcoming book Serpent's Tongue examines why we gossip, thinks there are other forces at work in pub conversation.

"There's always a element of self-presentation in all gossip. All of us select topics of conversation that show how competent, successful, smart and insightful we are."

Men, it seems, are particularly adept at using discussions about work, shopping and property to showcase their achievements, triumphs and successes.

Phil Robinson from men's magazine Loaded reckons pub conversation is just a way to let off steam.

"The first thing men do when they start talking is gripe. Gripe about their jobs, gripe about their partners. Only when conversation runs out will they go on to cars and sex."

Mr Robinson reckons the poor showing of sex in the survey is probably down to the age of most pub-goers.

"Most 16-year-old will talk about sex all day, but grown men who are actually having sex find it a far less fascinating subject.

"Men, of say 25, have careers, relationships and a whole host of other things on their minds. If you start talking about the size of women's breasts, your mates are likely to think: 'That's irrelevant to my daily grind.'"

"What men talk about in pubs" could itself become an irrelevant topic in the not too distant future.

Another recent survey, this time by Company magazine, found the pub has become a part of the daily routine for an increasing number of women.

Some 50% of the London women polled said they headed for the pub after work.

So here's a poser for the boys at the bar: are those women over there talking about us?