Julie Burchill

How did modern sex get so unsexy?

Carry On Abroad, 1972 (Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Alamy) 
issue 25 February 2023

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.’

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