Sex and the City means family values

The sexually explicit scenes in Sex and the City – now into its last series on Channel 4 – make me feel like Maurice Chevalier: I’m so glad that I’m not young any more. It is not that I feel, as my husband Richard West does, that it is all quite ‘filthy’ and ‘disgusting’ (he recalls with fondness the Old Aussie saying ‘There’s nothing worse than toilet talk from sheilas’): goodness me, I’m no prude.

It is just that some of the sexual gymnastics, particularly as demonstrated by Samantha and the young men she picks up, seem somehow both humiliating and competitive. I mean, you look at Olympic swimming and marvel at what the human body can accomplish, but you do not imagine that you are supposed to do likewise in the municipal pool the next day. But you look at the amazing positions which Samantha and her lovers demonstrate, and it might worry you dreadfully if you could not emulate these Olympics successfully.