Bad sex and trees...

Nuts to the Man Booker Prize! The Pulitzer Prize - what's that? Phooey to the Nobel Prize for Literature!! The real big one is the handiwork of that most distinguished - erm - organ - the Literary Review. - the Bad Sex Award.

Each year since 1993, Literary Review has presented the award to the author who produces the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. The award itself is in the form of a 'semi-abstract trophy representing sex in the 1950s' which depicts a naked woman draped over an open book. The award was originally established by Rhoda Koenig, a literary critic, and the late great Auberon Waugh, then editor of the Literary Review.

The award is helpfully explained to have as its objective 'to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it'.

And quite right too. The rabbit has assiduously avoided passages of sexual description in his fiction - not for any prudish reason but because it's damn nigh impossible to get them right plus also his former line editor Barry Fantoni advised him that 'people who read descriptions of sex acts - there's a word for them'.

Indeed there is as Christine O'Donnell will confirm (yup - the rabbit can work her into any topic).

Anyway, the winner of the Bad Sex Award has always been the author of a work of fiction but this may be about to change!

I apologise to those who have just been abruptly seperated from their lunch by this image. It is by Beau Bo D'Or and commemorates the happy occasion when Cherie got preggers after being too embarrassed to take her contraceptive equipment (believed to consist of a JCB digger/excavator and a tanker full of lard) to Balmoral on a visit to the Queen.

Yes - Tony Blair is among the nominees for the big one - the 2010 Bad Sex Award - for his autobiography A Journey. Amusingly, the award is for fiction. One might even think this fact is a dig at B.Liar in itself. Here is the steamy passage for the delectation of a wider public...

'That night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me. On that night of 12 May 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct'.

Oh Barf!!! Okayyyyyyy..... He wins! Enough! Somehow I can't see him turning up to collect the award - the chicken!

While on the subject of bad sex, the Italians have found a novel and controversial method of dealing with a prostitution problem - chopping down trees.

For decades, local law enforcement and politicians have struggled to police the Bonifica del Tronto road, a haven for the sex trade that runs inland for more than 10 miles from the Adriatic coast alongside the river Tronto. The powers that be have tried all sorts of spiffing wheezes to stop this problem - CCTV cameras, 24 hour patrols, financial penalties.

Etc - all to no avail.

Now - and highly controversially - the regional government's public works chief, Angelo Di Paolo, announced that the time had come for drastic measures. He said he had agreed with provincial and municipal representatives to cut down all the vegetation 'around and along the banks of the river Tronto', where the prostitutes ply their trade. This proposal has unsurprisingly caused uproar among environmentalists who complain that the scheme would destroy 28 hectares (69 acres) of woodland vital to local ecosystems.

The rabbit has a more modest proposal for solving this problem. Have the offending passages from Blair's book translated into Italian and have them broadcast VERY LOUDLY INDEED from strategically placed PA systems around the area where the prostitutes and their punters are at it. Should put them right off their - erm - stroke. Think Vogon poetry in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Hat Tip to Mahal.