"'Ejaculate in a Vagina?' I Don't Know Much, but I Do Know This: That's the Worst Term for Fucking, I've Ever Heard" - Roy Blount Jr.

Ian Hollingshead has robbed David Mitchell of the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award. That's Hollingshead pictured above with the prize (the white joke of a thing that is not Courtney Love).

The Bad Sex Award goes to the person responsible for the writing the most "unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passage of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novel." Clearly, this year, that honor belongs to David:

If Dawn Madden's breasts were a pair of Danishes, Debby Crombie's got two Space Hoppers. Each armed with a gribbly nipple. Tom Yew kissed them in turn and his saliva glistened in the April sun. I know watching was wrong but I couldn't not. Tom Yew slipped off her red panties and stroked the cressy hair there.

'If you want me to stop, Madam Crombie, you have to say now.'

'Oooh, Master Yew,' she croodled, 'don't you dare.'

Tom Yew got on her and sort of jiggled there and she gasped like he was giving her a Chinese burn and wrapped her legs round him, froggily.

Taking that as a clue, Master Yew moves up and down "Man-from-Atlantisly" until he "jerkjerks judderily" as if "booted in the balls," prompting dear Debby to make "salmony welts into his arse" with her fingernails.

That, my friends, is your winner.

You don't have to take my word for it. Go read the nominees for yourself. Unashamed or unaware of their crime, the Literary Review has posted them on their Web site. You'll see I'm right.

You'll also see that the penis gets the short end of the descriptive stick in literary fiction. It's enough to give a guy vagina envy.

I mean, I love my "bow-taut cock" as much as the next guy (um, ... just move on), but I couldn't help but covet a "engorged basketry of cowl and lip" after reading those passages.

I don't think I've had VE this bad since I read that at The Vagina Monologues, they ask women playful questions about their vaginas, like "What would you name it?" 'What would it wear?" "What would it say?" Afterwards, I wanted a vagina so I could participate in the dialogue. (answers: Nell Carter, a muu-muu, and it wouldn't say anything, so much as wheeze and sweat a lot.)

But I'm digressing again. (It's becoming a problem.)

I'd like to get back on topic, but, unfortunately, I need to get a move on. I'm off to find a gribbly nippled woman with cressy hair in her merkin place, to see if I can make her croodle. Apparently, this can only be done in daylight.

Pray for me.