Bringing sexy back

Sexual intercourse, Philip Larkin famously wrote, began in 1963. And listening to contemporary commentators, you’d think that it came to an end in 2017 with the birth of the #MeToo movement. For these voices of doom, the end of the erotic is nigh; Britain is on the brink of sexual apocalypse.

The recent news that Netflix has banned flirtation from film sets — along with lingering hugs, requests for phone numbers and extensive touching — is for these commentators just the latest example of #MeToo sexual correctness gone mad. They fear we are witnessing the making of a bland new world where the rules and regulations governing social relations between the sexes will become so oppressive that the very sexiness of sex itself will be snuffed out.

I understand and sympathise with the prophets of doom because, until recently, I was one of them. Men like me — old-fashioned romantics who enjoyed flirtation and the art of seduction (conducted, of course, with old-world courtesy and consideration) — were finished. In a world where flirtation is forbidden and where to invite a work colleague for a cocktail is now condemned as coercion by other means, I was a dodo. As Sarah Vine put it recently: ‘Such men are becoming increasingly unacceptable in this #MeToo world of ours. So vehement is the backlash against anything resembling traditional masculinity, it’s hard to see a future for them.’

Yes, I had seen that future and it was sexless. It was time to bin my boxes of Viagra, chuck out the multi-coloured condoms, hang up my handcuffs and bid a tearful farewell to my old faithful friend Mr Penis Ring. The game was up and the good times were over; the warriors of the #MeToo movement had won the battle for hearts, minds and genitalia.

But then I began to think about the Netflix ban on looking at work colleagues for more than five seconds — and I suddenly realised that you can wink and smile at someone in less than five seconds.