Reality puts the rot into erotica

If the books and movies are to be believed, sex is a beautiful thing. Men can perform on demand numerous times a night, and all women have flat stomachs and perfect breasts, and nobody ever farts.

Condoms appear magically on cue, and disappear when the couple is finished, and nobody ever needs a tissue, or rolls onto the wet spot afterwards.

Nobody hogs the duvet or comes to bed in nothing but their socks. They never get a knee in the ribs, or their hair caught under the other person's hand, and the choreography never needs to be navigated. And just about every single time, both people manage to reach an earth-shattering, mind-blowing, toe-curling simultaneous orgasm, barely breaking a sweat - managing a lovely glamorous glow, if anything.

Even the sheets in movies are unrealistic. The woman always has it pulled up to cover her boobs, while the guy's sheet only just covers his waist. Which is really strange since I've never seen an L-shaped sheet in the shops before.

Sexually charged books have become so huge over the last couple of years that they've changed our world as we know it. On the one hand, they have woken some women up from very long sexual hibernations, and have made them want to shag like crazy and experiment with all sorts of new and exciting things and locations. Sales of love eggs, whips, chains and latex pants and masks have never been higher. And men everywhere who had previously only ever come home from work to macaroni and cheese, are now arriving home to love swings, role play and stripper poles.

Most of them must be pleasantly surprised at first, then a little confused, and ultimately exhausted after being forced to perform daily on demand and perhaps being on the giving or receiving end of a little light spanking.

Penis injuries are at an all-time high too. Careless zipping causes the bulk of penis injuries but that statistic is now closely followed by chronic chafing and fractures, both of which are side effects of lots of energetic rompy-pompy.

There's always a downside to everything - after reading these books, many women might find themselves deeply dissatisfied with their lot.

It must be very difficult to read about tons of perfect orgasmic sex with a multi-billionaire who has his own personal chef and a specially fitted-out love den, and then look up to find you're the personal chef and your love den is littered with your kid's Lego pieces, something the cat coughed up on the carpet three days ago and sweaty balled-up socks that just missed the hamper by a hair. Every time.

But the people I feel most sorry for in this equation are the men. The pressure really is on. Women everywhere must be looking at their boyfriends and husbands a little squiff. After all, Christian Grey came four times last night and the most you managed was a Top Gear rerun and then you shared a Mars Bar.

But if we're being completely honest, it's probably a good thing movies and books aren't true to life. I'm not sure I want to read the book, or watch the movie that portrays sex the way it really is. Things do tend to get rather messy; also it wouldn't be a very long book, the sex scenes would generally only last a paragraph here or there. On occasion they would just trail off after one or two sentences, especially if it's been a particularly long day ...