Ananova:

British men find the prospect of asking a woman to marry them almost as scary as swimming with sharks, according to a new survey.

Four out of five men were so petrified of proposing that they preferred to forego tradition and wait for their girlfriends to propose to them.

Of those polled, over a quarter (28%) ranked swimming with sharks as the scariest thing to do, closely followed by 23% who considered proposing marriage to be the most frightening.

Popping the question ranked more terrifying than jumping out of a plane, going for a job interview and wearing an opposition football shirt in the home stand.

The survey was commissioned by Vue cinemas to mark the release of smash-hit comedy, The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.

Mark de Quervain for Vue, said: "It's really interesting to see that most men consider proposing almost as scary as swimming with sharks!

"It seems that art is imitating life and like in The Proposal we are seeing women take matters into their own hands and at Vue, we're receiving more and more requests from wannabe brides who want to propose in our cinemas."

The survey also found that more and more women were making up for men's fears by choosing to pop the question, leap year or not.

Over half (56%) of women polled said they would be more than happy to propose to their boyfriend, with seven in ten women day-dreaming of getting married at least once a day.