A website for so-called beautiful people has ranked males from the island of Ireland as the ugliest in the world, Belfast Telegraph reported.

Just one in 20 of Northern Ireland single males who apply to land their profiles on beautifulpeople.com are accepted, according to the website's latest statistics.

New analysis of last year's nation-by-nation figures has also revealed that the Republic of Ireland and Poland are joint second-to-bottom on the list, with just a 9% success rate.

That's no consolation to Irish men, who at just 6%, have been rated as the world's ugliest by the Los Angeles-based site's chiefs - a stark contrast to the table-topping Swedes at 65%.

The elite dating club now claims more than five million members worldwide, despite its strict vetting procedures whereby picky members of the opposite sex rate you on the basis of how attractive you look in a submitted profile picture.

Although an average of one in five, or 20% of all global applicants - up to 3,000 every day - make it on to the site, there are huge discrepancies between nations. Men from India (15%), Germany (15%) and the UK (12%) also proved a turn-off for voters, while hunks from Brazil (45%), Denmark (40%) and Italy (39%) got the thumbs-up.

However, there was better news for Irish women, who have a respectable 19% admission rate, above the bottom-of-the-list Germans at just 13%.

Scandinavian babes dominated the top three places, with Norwegians the pick of the world's beauties at 76%, followed by Sweden at 68% and Iceland at 66%.