But it is hard to take that line and still feel like a sophisticated, cultured liberal, isn?t it? My theory is that the bygone campaigns of Mary Whitehouse have a lot to answer for. She made the cause of ?purity? into something ridiculous by taking an extreme stance, inveighing against even an adulterous kiss in a heartfelt drama, or the depiction of an unmarried couple waking up in bed together. She seemed unaware of changing mores and the complications of love, and became an open goal for ridicule from everyone who thought that fiction should be free to reflect the world. And that healthy ridicule became a smokescreen for every lazy smutmonger to pose as daring and free, rather than silly and degrading. If you wince at anything now ? however coarse ? someone will associate you with Whitehousean prudishness. It has been a disaster.
The sausage hauled from Mr Moyles?s Speedos is the least of it. Night after night, comedy, chat, quizzes, pop videos and entertainment shows lean on ever more explicit sexual crudeness.
Sometimes it wants to allure, as in the thrusting, licking, grinding gyrations of Rihanna or Christina Aguilera on The X Factor. Sometimes it purports to be educational, with a smiley lady waving dildos and lubricants around as if auditioning for Very Blue Peter. Sometimes explicit sex appears in drama, which is fine by me provided that the emotional fallout is honestly depicted.
Mostly, though, it wears a comedy hat. Not in the old-fashioned bawdy way, which celebrates the absurdities innate in lusting and mating; far more often, the comedic focus is aggressive, contemptuous and cruel.
Think of Frankie Boyle, ?joking? that Katie Price married a cage-fighter because she needed someone strong to protect her from the sexual advances of her mentally disabled son as he grew older. Or take his comments on Rebecca Adlington, sneering that because her boyfriend is better looking than her, the only explanation was she must be ?very dirty?. He added (sorry, but it?s relevant) that as a swimmer she was good at holding her breath. We know what supposedly ?dirty? thing he is talking about, the little creep.
Or think of Andrew Sachs, repeatedly phoned on air by two cackling idiots bragging that one of them slept with his granddaughter. They went into paroxysms of mirth at the thought that the old man might have a picture of her as a little girl on a swing, and be upset to visualise her being ?had? by Russell Brand. Or Jonathan Ross asking David Cameron whether he masturbated over pictures of the (now frail and elderly) Lady Thatcher. Or Moyles changing the words of a Will Young song to mock this private artist?s homosexuality.
Many other examples are even less graceful to quote in print (not that all print is free of a parallel coarse fascination). Nor is it only TV and radio that show this coarsening effect: any bus journey with schoolchildren aboard will turn the air blue, and F- and C-words adorn hoardings for weeks, unheeded and unscrubbed.
Does all this really matter? The most popular objection to ?smut? concerns the fear that children will become upset or sexualised. That is a reasonable worry when the watershed of 9pm has little meaning in the digital age. But it seems to me that the effect on adults is equally dispiriting. I put my cards on the table: I like frankness about sex and sexuality, and hate to think of the shuddering prurience of the days when the Lord Chancellor could demand removal of the word ?fart? from a play. I like a good joke, and enjoy ironic burlesque and cabaret, provided it is genuinely witty. I have not the slightest objection to explicitness in intelligent comedy (at least Sex and the City makes fun of its man-crazy women and exploitative men). In TV drama, too, it has a necessary place: sexuality is integral to human nature, leading sometimes to great happiness and sometimes to violent evils. It has to be fine to reflect that.
But the theme has become repetitive, ubiquitous and, most important, often cruel. This matters for two reasons, one serious and the other frivolous. The serious danger is that we normalise and convey to the rising generation the idea of sex as a constant universal preoccupation and prime necessity, yet basically just a lark: something to be flaunted and traded and pornified and objectified. When this happens we lose sight of its reality. Sex is not only about reproduction but about intimacy. It can be, and often is, a powerful binding force between two people: a deeply private connection in which you lie open to one another, unashamed, accepting the physical completeness of another person as a symbol of your love for their personhood. It is tied up with devotion, care and a refusal to betray. It goes deep into the hopes and dreams of complex human beings. To joke about it is an instinct as old as mankind. But it is the crude, merciless harping on of it ? as a public thing, a competition, a technical exercise ? that damages us.
The second reason to regret the endless genital preoccupation is that it robs us of the art of innuendo. How can you be a bit mischievous if every damn thing is paraded before you in pink and tedious detail? Where is the Ooh, Matron? In an age when Julian Clary helps build his career by claiming to have done obscene things to the Chancellor of the Exchequer backstage, what price the innocent joy we once got from Jules and Sandy misspelling ?naval engagements? on Round the Horne? When will we ever get another gag like Kenneth Horne receiving the fashion news that ?bosoms are coming back? with a deep, orotund growl of, ?I, for one, will keep a candle burning in the window??
When we ditched public modesty, we lost the joys of suggestiveness. I sort of miss that, too.
Elvira Werner Erhard Dale Evans Chad Everett Douglas Fairbanks
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