Get count of records affected by INSERT or UPDATE in PostgreSQL

My database driver for PostgreSQL 8/9 does not return a count of records affected when executing INSERT or UPDATE.

PostgreSQL offers the non-standard syntax "RETURNING" which seems like a good workaround. But what might be the syntax? The example returns the ID of a record, but I need a count.

INSERT INTO distributors (did, dname) VALUES (DEFAULT, 'XYZ Widgets') RETURNING did;