Craig is 16 and he has a problem. “Everyone I know has had sex but I just haven’t had it. They are part of the ‘I’ve-had-sex gang’. I want to be part of that. Be pretty cool. I don’t really know how to go about it. When you are a teenage guy, just one thing is on your mind.”

Chervana is 17 and she too is focused on one issue. “I don’t know why I have not had sex. I don’t really know what’s going on. I really should have had it by now.”

Beware. You are now entering the world of teenage sex (or, often as not, non-sex). This is a world where hormones rage, confusion reigns and there is nothing that cannot be confessed in front of a TV camera. Those who are easily embarrassed should clear a space behind the sofa now.

MTV scoured the land for ten teenage virgins, gave them video cameras and asked them to record their lives over a three-month period as they considered having sex for the first time. The result is Virgin Diaries, a series that sounds like the last word in tacky reality TV salaciousness and is sure to be controversial. But, like teenage sex itself, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

We meet Craig, the son of a maths teacher and a professor of engineering, clowning around in his Sussex village. One of his mates tells him “we will get you laid”. And pretty soon things are looking up for the boy, who claims to have enjoyed some fumblings but has never engaged in full sexual congress. “Guess who pulled?” he tells his camera early in the show. Very quickly things with his new girlfriend Chloe are “getting a lot more serious. I can see us having sex pretty soon”. Pause. “Which I’m kind of nervous about.”

Craig’s anxiety is focused less on moral than mechanical issues (“I’m not sure where everything is in relation to everything else”). He has a talk with his dad, which leaves him shuddering with embarrassment at his father’s description of how to behave in bed. “It gave me really bad visuals,” he says.

One night when his parents are out he cooks an Italian dinner for Chloe and the teenagers are filmed (by the film crew, which also follows Craig from time to time) padding upstairs to bed. Cut to the next morning and all the pressure has got to Craig, who confesses that he had been unable to rise to the occasion. “I failed in my duties,” he says. This state of affairs continues for a while and Craig becomes concerned.

We see Chloe at home, where her mum asks if she has had sex with her new boyfriend yet. “It didn’t happen,” she says. Craig shows us his wastepaper basket full of opened but unused condoms that bear testimony to his failures. After a few weeks of this Chloe suggests that he doesn’t drink so much. “Chloe definitely needs it or it might be over,” he says. “Psyching myself up. Definitely doing it this week.” He looks petrified.

Chervana, from Surrey, is one of identical twins. Her sister, Mel, has a boyfriend and Chervana describes the noise of her sister being spanked in the next room. Chervana is still a virgin and “I’m not sure why. I’ve been dating guys since I was 13. I first gave head when I was 13”. She says she wants to feel “extra comfortable” with the person she sleeps with for the first time.

Her diary begins at the turn of the year. “This is going to be my last new year as a virgin. I want to find a guy and start going out with him and have a real relationship.” But then the doubts set in. “I’ve been thinking about sex. It’s just sex. I don’t know why I’m uncomfortable about having sex,” she says. “It’s just, like, being bent over a bed.” Part of her reluctance seems to be associated with distaste for the act itself.

She claims to be “so ready to get it on” with a guy she dates, called Ant, but he stops returning her calls. “I was going to lose my virginity to him,” she opines. “Probably very ready to lose my virginity but there’s something that’s not ready. It’s weird.” In desperation she turns to her mother, with whom she says she never usually discusses such matters. Mum offers sound advice: “Why don’t you wait until you are really sure?” she says gently. “You need to be able to look back and think ‘that was right’.”

“Of all people mum has given me something to think about,” she says incredulously. It may bring hope to mothers everywhere that this one provided the crucial piece of advice. Chervana thinks about what she has said and comes up with a surprising conclusion: “I think I’m gay.” She tells her mother and sister, who both accept this, although her mother suggests that it might just be a phase.

At the beginning of each programme one of the virgins is introduced with the come-on: “He’s/she’s a virgin. He/she might not be by the end of Virgin Diaries.” By the end of the filming three out of ten of the teenagers had lost their virginity. This makes it sound like a rather dubious game but Michael Barry, managing director of MTV Networks UK & Ireland, insists that while there is “an element of packaging up a programme” for an MTV audience the series in no way lays down a challenge to the participants to lose their virginity; there are no winners or losers. Rather, this is “an opportunity to start talking about sex in a way that kids feel comfortable talking. Maybe in a way that adults don’t. I think young people are not given credit for being complex and clever in the way that they negotiate their lives. At the end of three months some decide to have sex and some don’t.”