In Competition No. 3303, you were invited to submit an explanation of the facts of life by a person from the field of fact or fiction who might be deemed a surprising choice.
A commendation to A.R. Duncan-Jones, whose lesson harnessed the reverse chronology of Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow: ‘Every ejaculation is premature. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?… Quite apart from the disappointment and frustration, it’s also extremely embarrassing to find yourself ejaculating inside a girl that you’ve never even met.’
And to David Shields’s Gradgrind: ‘Sexual congress. Undertaken by one male and one female. Purpose: propagation of species. Method: introduction of sperm to ovum. Result: impregnation of female partner, followed by nine months’ gestation and, eventually, parturition.’
D.A. Prince and A.H. Harker also stood out, but the cash prizes go to the winners, below, who earn £30 apiece.
Good mounting, children. You’ll be ignited to know that it’s time for your sex edification lesson, now repulsory in all schools. I’m here to share some age-approximated defamation about your sexual encumbrances, now and in the future.
I shall traduce you to the many instabilities, and the various precisions you can adopt, including aural sex for the hard of hearing, and the benefits of mastication to relieve digestive problems. And a word about diversity and infusion. Over ten per cent of the copulation are in same-sex receiverships: ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gender,’ as Aristotle said.
We’ll discuss methods to avoid conceptualising, how to discombulate unwelcome advances, and treatment of sexually-transmogrified diseases. By which time any vestibule of romance in your lives will have been disbursed, so I suggest you return to your favourite porn provender for more disinformation.
The bell! Class dismember, everyone out, foreplay time.
Sylvia Fairley/Mrs Malaprop
The average speed of a sperm after, uh, ignition? A pathetic twenty-eight miles per hour! What kind of girlie speed is that? It’s like Mary Beard in her grandma’s clapped-out 1950s Morris Minor struggling round Swindon’s one-way system.

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