BRITONS can now only achieve happiness while seeing others, preferably also Britons, having a total and utter nightmare. 

A new study found UK citizens derive more pleasure from seeing other humans having a horrendously stressful time than from sex, hobbies or playful interaction with baby animals.

Emma Bradford of Grantham said: “What makes me happiest? Quality time with my husband and kids, of course. By which I mean watching a couple lose hundreds of thousands while their marriage collapses on Kevin McCloud’s Rich Pricks Who Pay For Their Hubris.” 

Cheerful postman Roy Hobbs said: “Nothing gives me a warm feeling like a Bake Off contestant f**king up their spanakopita. Seeing their dream wither and die on camera right there in front of their heroes. Can’t beat it.

“I kid myself I want to see them do well. I don’t. I want to see them screw up in the most wretched manner and then curl into a gibbering foetal ball while Paul beats them with a spatula screaming ‘You vile cur’.

“Look at me, I’m smiling.”

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “Nothing brightens our day more than the sight of someone else being goaded and prodded into a state of abject despair.

“But our happiness is not derived solely from schadenfreude and pathological misanthropy. 22 per cent of people also listed ‘meat’.”