Big news from what we could refer to as “the sexual realm”. Despite decades of insistence that all the best sex lasts 15 hours, spans a minimum of nine positions and has both parties hammering dementedly away at each other's nether regions like a pair of autistic woodpeckers, it seems the truth is a little different. Well, totally different. According to a poll of 50 sex therapists, the most desirable sex lasts, in actual fact, mere minutes. Between 3 and 13, optimally. Or, to break it down another way, a span somewhere between Penny Lane and the second half of an episode of My Family. The time it takes to get from Finchley Road to Wembley Park. Barely enough time to toast a muffin.

It should be made clear that, apparently, this paradigmatic shag snack does not include foreplay. Nor does it include the enigmatically named “afterplay” - something that, presumably, in some manner of sexual paradise, would consist of snuggling, reverential caressing and pleasingly stupefied recitation of love poetry, but which, in actuality, comprises three minutes of lying flat on your back, going “Arrrr, that was smashing”, then a sleepy exchange vis-à-vis the location of the cat, and whether the central heating has been left on or not.

No, it doesn't include any of that. None of it. This 3-to-13-minutes statistic is devoted purely to the central, core, essential, elemental, no-frills act of jiggy-jiggy. And, I for one, am greatly cheered by the whole thing. I am hugely in favour of the “capsule poke”, as we could perhaps start referring to it. I dislike shilly-shallying in all matters, and see no reason to make an exception when it comes to extreme rudeness. From a health and safety standpoint alone, there are huge problems with a lengthy rut. We are, after all, dealing with fairly fragile areas of the human body here. Frankly, I find the concept of these night-long marathons baffling. Whenever I read one of those News of the World “We made love all night long” kiss'n'tell scoops, the logistics of it terrify me. Loving all night long would, surely, be equivalent to rubbing the tip of your nose between two pork chops for 19 hours. Essentially, it's an abrasive act. I can't see how you wouldn't injure yourself terribly.

Similarly, whilecertainly a great fan of “sexual intercourse” - I find it a refreshing alternative to both arguments and jogging, and believe it to be the only civilised way to end a game of Scrabble - life is, tragically, short. Very short. However wonderful being borne aloft on the wings of ecstasy, etc, may be, there are also an awful lot of Neil Finn albums to get through, hats to wear, air-guitar to play, anecdotes to tell, and clips of cats falling off things on YouTube to watch. I don't believe that these activities are necessarily better than physically uniting with a loved/drunken one. It's just that I wouldn't sacrifice them in favour of 19 hours of a really quite repetitive act. Honestly, if you can't achieve what you set out to do in half an hour or less, it's possible that you just might not be doing it properly. I'd check all available diagrams, and try again.

This is why I'm quietly thrilled by the publication of this survey. I am appreciative of the breath of calm it has brought to an - often literally, given that coital sawing action - fraught area. It is a statement that serves to remind everyone that sex is, essentially, something simple and ordinary that can be accomplished with the minimum of fuss. Because sometimes, you know, it just feels a bit like sex has been taken over by The Man. What was once achieved with the minimum of bother, for little or no expense - and, often, with one or more of the participants restfully asleep - has in recent decades become a gigantically hectic palaver. Sex now has accessories: wands, pads, magic vibrating eggs. Oxymoronically for something fairly reliant on nakedness, it has outfits. And on top of all the new-found, rampant consumerism - this need for extraneous sex stuff - what was once fairly famously some pleasing animal dumbness now seems to require as much planning, thought and self-expression as two retired architects building a modernist glass cube on Grand Designs. These days, you're sexually nothing unless you harbour at least one unlikely, baroque and pointedly unique sexual fantasy, such as wanting to be partially absorbed by a mermaid. You can't just have a good old-fashioned mindless shag. Anyone into “vanilla” sex - like Rachel in Friends when she admits that the most adventurous place she has ever had sex is “at the bottom of the bed” - is seen as a trifle, well, repressed. We're apt to believe that the more bizarre, complex or unusual our sexual fantasies, the deeper, cleverer and more interesting we are.

I have to admit that I'm guilty of this totally pointless sexual one-upmanship. At a recent party everyone was discussing their sexual experiences and fantasies, to which I was contributing some of my “razzier” true-life stories. Although not the one where I ended up being sick down the front of a Tudorbethan house in Aylesbury, and had to clean off the plasterwork with a broom soaked in hot Dettol, while the would-be lesbian's mum shouted at me.

However, I realised how gauche all my freaky sex-boasting was when the quietest member of our group finally spoke up, and told us his key sexual fantasy. “It's having some sex with a nice woman,” he said, looking a bit embarrassed; but also notably much saner and less harassed than everyone else around the table.

And, really, there is a man we can all look up to, and admire. Spurning the modern quacking and hoo-ha, and taking sex back to its enjoyable basics - like it's some kind of gastropub, but with la-las and foo-foos instead of pies. And I bet he takes exactly 6 minutes.

Wake-up call for birdsong lovers
A radio station that broadcasts nothing but birdsong from British country gardens has become an unlikely hit. Half a million listeners have tuned into the Birdsong station (www.ukdigitalradio.com/news/display.asp?id=290), which broadcasts from 6am to midnight every day and plays 20 minute-long loops of wood pigeon, thrush, blackbird, some kind of finch and, having listened to it, what seems to be a random elephant, at three minutes in.

Alas, however: the channel faces closure, unless the “eccentric millionaire” called for on the station's Facebook page comes through with funding and upgrades the station. And, indeed, the need for the Birdsong station may be even more urgent than it initially seems. Various reports over the past decade have concluded that the British bird's repertoire of songs is being radically truncated. Widespread urban noise pollution means that birds just can't hear each other any more. Consequently, they are failing to learn songs from each other, as they once did.

When I read the first of these reports, I realised that they were right. The dawn choruses of my childhood seemed immense - whole treefuls of birds exploding with the sun, and sounding like the orchestral wig-out in A Day In The Life. These days, however, the dawn chorus sounds like three rats coughing behind some bins - a pitiful collection of bleeps, squawks and rasps that no more welcomes the dawn than the sound of a brick being thrown through a window.

Impossibly saddened by this desecration of one of Nature's most beautiful gifts, last summer I resolved to do something about it. For five hope-filled days, I hoicked my stereo up on to the windowsill, every dawn and blasted out CDs of British birdsong. I hoped to teach the birds, once more, to sing. Then, unfortunately, I had a series of hangover lie-ins and blew the whole project. But if we could all set our radio alarms for Birdsong station, and crank it up really loud, there is a chance that, once again, we could have birds with a repertoire, instead of them sounding like the avian equivalents of Pete Doherty.

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