The 15-question 'LQ' test compiled by MSN's inhouse consumer marketeer Clare Bolton is designed to establish whether or not the website's readers ?aspire to Madonna's lifestyle, or is Kate Winslet's down-to-earth existence more appealing? But beware, how do you know you're not really Vicky Pollard? By finding out your Lifestyle Quotient, that's how."

The questions cover the size and style of respondents' homes, the number of staff they employ, the number of holidays they take each year and the quantity of beauty treatments, polo matches and designer clothes to which they treat themselves each week, month and year.

Yet the word lifestyle" cannot be solely tethered to (or judged by) levels of consumption. When super-salaried city bankers with closets full of Savile Row tailoring and tans still glowing from that last-minute weekend in the Caribbean clear their desks and become rural postal workers, they say they're doing it for the lifestyle". When we say a good" lifestyle, we really mean one that makes us happy.

Business consultants have traditionally calculated the possible lifestyle" they could expect doing different jobs by using equations that balance the time spent at work with the size of the salary and the level of job satisfaction received.

MSN asks its readers how many bedrooms they have but not how many friends they have to fill them. It asks how much they spend on luxuries but not how much time they have to enjoy them.

It assumes that to exercise they must either be a gym member or hire a personal trainer. To eat well, they must fill their trolley with expensive food. It assumes, in short, that a good lifestyle must be bought. (Although it does advise horrifically high maintenance" types to phone a friend rather than buy that extra frock. ) A report on the first 1,000 people in Britain who have taken the time to click their way through the survey ?reveals" that 57% of us are members of a Gucci Generation . . . living a life of luxury".

The pace-setters are the over-65s, who seem to be indulging themselves more than anyone else. Secretaries have the highest LQ score among working people, followed by IT consultants. The Welsh boast of enjoying the most lavish lifestyles of any region. This surely can't be the case? And with bankers claiming to spend less than their secretaries, are these secretaries with their eight-room houses who take six holidays a year living a life of debt? What kind of a ?lifestyle" is that?

It seems more likely that . . . rather than living it large . . . retired folk, secretaries, IT workers and the Welsh spend more of their time filling in market research surveys than the rest of us.

MSN also claims its survey reveals that one-in-six men treats himself to a regular man makeover", although closer study of the question posed reveals that men may have just clicked on the dot because they have a monthly short back and sides. Perhaps the fact that the website will soon be launching a men's fashion and grooming" section (which is seeking advertisers) explains why MSN has been lathering up the language on that section.

Clare Bolton says: ?Its all a bit tonguein-cheek, a bit of light-hearted fun. We don't want to depress anybody. We want MSN Lifestyle to be a source of inspiration for those with a low score."

Of course, once you've studied the questions and filled in the form, you may be left agreeing with the American humorist Fran Lebowitz, who said:

Those who use the word 'lifestyle' rarely have either."