Two thirds of local folk spend an entire working day chatting with friends each week and one in 10 prefer a good gossip rather than a conversation with their other half.

And, according to the research carried out by Virgin Media, the biggest gossip addicts are Belfast's office workers.

One in 20 admit to spending more than 12 hours each week gassing with their colleagues and a third of those surveyed cited a good old chinwag as one of their favourite hobbies.

The survey also found that a quarter of Belfast people engage in extended chats over the water cooler - with an unlucky few (5%) being caught out by the boss.

The hot topic for people in Belfast is last night's television as 12% confess to being hooked on the latest news from the Big Brother house and more than one in 10 regularly natter about their favourite soap characters as if they are their best friends.

And it seems the royal family aren't as interesting as the paparazzi might have us believe with only 3% of people in Belfast spending their precious gossiping time on Charles and Camilla.

Results also show that men are not far behind women in the gossiping stakes (35% and 48% respectively).

Favourite topics for male discussion are sport (47%) and their latest night out with the boys (35%). Women, on the other hand, prefer to talk about their family (60%) and friends (50%).

And, perhaps surprisingly - despite the stereotype - Belfast's taxi drivers and hairdressers featured at the bottom of the gossip rankings, with only 6% spending more than six hours chatting each week.

It also seems that traditional chat is being pushed aside as people turn to modern technology for their gossip fix.

Email and texting are Belfast's preferred method (58%), with more than one in six putting their speedy typing skills down to chatting on their PCs.

And one in 10 local people have noticed they chat far more since they have owned a mobile phone.

Online messaging services such as MSN and Yahoo! are top of the list for the younger generation, as half of 16 to 24-year-olds prefer to log on and chat as they surf the web.