How did modern sex get so unsexy?

On hearing the rumours that the boxer David Haye is in a ‘throuple’ – a three-person romantic relationship – with Una Healy from the Saturdays and a model named Sian Osborne, I felt a rare flicker of carnal pique. Apparently Victoria Beckham is off her feed (a prawn and two capers) with worry that her baby boy Brooklyn might be in a throuple with his wife Nicola Peltz and singer Selena Gomez, while Rita Ora is still denying that she and her now-husband Taika Waititi were in one with the attractive actress Tessa Thompson a couple of years back. They were papped having what appeared to be a three-way snog on a hotel balcony. You wait ages for a throuple – and then three come along at once!   

Personally, I’m pleased about the rise of the throuple, mostly as a cheeky snub to the dullest sentence in the English language: ‘As part of a loving and monogamous relationship between two people.’ So strong is my mutinous streak that whenever I hear someone say this, I automatically add to myself: ‘Just be sure to choose the right two people to get between.’ Throuples sound ‘naughty’ in the traditional British sense – a throwback to the days of the music hall and the seaside postcard, of Carry On films, Sid James and Hattie Jacques. After a few years of marriage, Hattie moved her toyboy into the house she shared with her husband, so perhaps hers was the original throuple. Sex with a view to having naughty fun is sadly lacking in these woke-scold dog-days. You can no longer call something naughty, as it soundsas if you might be ‘judging’ and we all know where judging ends, because words are literally violence. 

Has sex ever been so relentlessly discussed yet so weirdly unsexy? We’ve reached the point where the strangest kinks – adult babies, leather pups, fancying Emily Thornberry – are acceptable, so long as no one actually appears to be having an exciting time and everyone makes it look like hard graft.