Awful, counter-erotic sex scenes have been a staple in literature for years. One of my personal favorites comes from the Sixties potboiler Naked Came the Stranger (I’m quoting from memory here):

“Like twin garter snakes they moaned, writhed and wriggled across the patio. Her lover’s kisses grew so heated and passionate she thought her fillings would melt.”

That’s gold. But in the old days, you just had to wait until you stumbled across stuff like that. Now, we’ve got the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards to guide us right to the source. This year the award went to first-time novelist Ian Hollingshead, who received the award from Courtney Love in a tasteful ceremony. Hollingshead said he hopes to win the award every year, and with lines like “her crotch taut against my bulging trousers” he just might get his wish. But the competition is, umm, stiff. This year’s nominees included heavyweights like Irvine Welsh and Thomas Pynchon (for a scene involving sex with a cocker spaniel), not to mention Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell, who compared one character’s breasts to “a pair of Danishes.â€? In the same story, he likened another character’s mammaries to “two Space Hoppers.”