You will spend longer reading this newspaper today than you will a work of fiction, assuming you are one of the 60% that bothers to pick up a book.

According to research into reading habits published yesterday, newspapers are more popular than novels among Britons reading for pleasure.

The average reader spends 17 minutes a day reading a newspaper, compared to 11 minutes on a novel. They spend a further seven minutes online, six minutes on non-fiction, five minutes with a magazine, and two minutes looking up things they did not understand in a reference book.

The total time spent reading is six hours a week, though this drops by an hour in the Midlands and the north. The average time spent watching TV is 24 and a half hours a week, and listening to radio 21 hours.

Conducted on behalf of the Orange Prize for Fiction, the survey concluded that 40% of people never read a book, and that women are more likely to read novels than men and spend around five minutes a day reading fiction, rising to 70 minutes on holiday.

In the survey, 200 couples were asked to keep reading diaries for three weeks.

Jenny Hartley, a lecturer in English literature at Roehampton University, said: "Book reading is not only competing against other forms of entertainment such as television but also against other printed media.

"The diaries suggest magazines and newspapers suit our need for quick fixes of reading material that fit easily into our lives.

"Fiction reading as a daily habit is a niche activity dominated by women."