I proceed with a languid exegesis of the apostrophe. “But are you, Sir?”

This isn’t a sex question. It’s a bonehead wind-up question. I drone on.

“The apostrophe rests between those swollen vowels.”

I could get done for this. One wrong move and it’s Section 28 or the P45 - or 14 years in the slammer. Thwakum of family education says so. Squeers of Childhood Rights says so. Nor must I suggest that sex is remotely “pleasurable”. Or get “too informative”. They’ll be at it like rabbits. And there’s quite enough Manias already.

When I was at school our sex lesson was delivered by an oleaginous centrally-parted Latin master. It wasn’t easy for us boys to imagine this man on the further shores of sexual ecstasy. He rather flagged up sex as miserable friction. Inside wedlock it was a grim and rarely necessary endeavour. Outside it seemed to incur Hellfire.

He favoured the bees and flowers exegesis.

“But I’m not a bee!” protested Martin “Elvis” Priestly, an object of desire for distraught high school girls.

The Latin master then unleashed a Swedish Army film on the varieties of plague consequent on sexual pleasure, from which I am still recovering.

Things fell off or itched like merry hell or you went lycanthropic.

Scabrous stuff which would have rendered Casanova impotent. We’d be better off - as he well might have been - hitting ourselves with sticks. This medieval approach seems to be back in fashion.

I will inflict it on Mania.

“Dave - you must desist! Sex leads merely to blindness and knobbly knees and terminal raving diseases. You’ll go to hell! Stick to Sats. Here’s a little film on the topic - it’s in Swedish.”

“But are you Sir?”

“Shut up Mania! You bleedin’ heterosexual!”

“You can’t say that, Sir! I could have you done!”