I suspect that there are many people within the Uk who share the same passion as us, but alas, us Brits are still quite the Stiff-Upper-Lip types and the wider society here tends to view any fetish as somewhat...abnormal. Its not, but people fear or loathe what they do not understand, and lets face it, our passion is hardly something your average Joe can easely relate to.
So, those that *do* relate stay pretty much silent for fear of receiving the wrong sort of attention. My personal advice to you is to take a leaf out of Big Jims book and go for as many "innocent" (lol, innocent my arse) tickles with your freinds and suchlike as possible, and see how they react to it. You'd be surprised how many people actualy like to be tickled even though they tell you that they don't, I have a freind who says she actualy hates it and goes into orbit when I prod her sides, but you can tell in her face that she doesn't really mind. Maybe its a vanilla thing, maybe its not.
You'll never know until you've tried.
AT