I was at a church primary school until about 9 and there was certainly no sex education there. I remember when I was about 6, I was told a joke.

It was something very simple, along the lines of someone putting his hand in a girl’s pocket. I knew it was naughty, but I just didn’t know what it meant.

I had to check it out with my friends. It was always very important to pretend that you knew by laughing along. Any kind of sympathetic or tender explanation of what it all meant was terribly lacking.

Even in my secondary school all we had was diagrams of rabbits and even then the teacher went bright scarlet. By then we were all sniggering because we had worked it out from the smutty jokes.

I think small children should be told everything when they are young, very simply. They should be told the facts and about biology, as if you are explaining how a car works. They just accept it and it is much healthier. I certainly never had anything like that. We were always warned not to do anything wrong, but it was up to us to work out what wrong meant. It probably meant getting pregnant. It was confusing and stupid. I was always very forthright with my own children and grandchildren, because it is much healthier.
Joan Bakewell, broadcaster and writer

I don’t really remember not knowing about the birds and the bees, but really I think it’s much more important to know about the other stuff to do with sex: foreplay, emotion and intimacy. I didn’t know anything about that. Sex education about how a baby is made skirts around the issue.

There were certain points where I discovered sexual practices that I just had no idea about. When I was in my late teens, I walked in on some boys watching porn at a party and was horrified. I’m nearly 40 now and still people will tell me things and I say: ‘They do what?!’ I’m still learning, really.
Sarah Beeny, TV presenter

Jonathan Andress told me the facts of life when I was 8. I didn’t believe him; what he was describing was ridiculous and rude. But evidence quickly started to mount, and I soon had to accept the truth.

Five or six years later, I was in the bath, and there was a knock on the door.

“It’s Dad. Can I come in for a chat?”

This was unusual. We were never a “chatting in the bath” family. Stranger still, he was carrying a stool, on which he sat and tried to look comfortable.

“How’s school?”

“Fine.”

“Mum says you’re learning about sex?”

“Yep.”

“Anything you want to ask me?”

“No.”

“Right-ho.”

And with that he picked up his stool and left.
Mackenzie Crook, actor and writer

Coming of age in 1991 to oddly coy parents (‘We thought you’d already picked it all up off Minder,’ they explained later), what little I understood of sex at the age of 16 came primarily from Emily Lloyd’s character being molested by a naughty uncle in the shed in Wish You Were Here. She was wearing a really well-cut sun dress, chewing gum, rolling her eyes and whispering: ‘You dirty sod.’ I’ve based pretty much my entire sexual persona on that, I realise in retrospect.
Caitlin Moran, Times writer

I learnt everything I know about sex from my parents’ bookshelves. My school sex-ed lecture had a sort of ‘chaps, know the enemy’ feel. There was one slide from which the lecturer sombrely read out a number of terms for the penis. Then there was a huge diagram of a vulva, helpfully labelled so we wouldn’t get majora and minora confused while on the job. Being a 13-year-old smart-arse, I asked: “Where’s the clitoris?” The lecturer coughed a lot. Not part of the lesson, apparently.
Sam Leith, writer

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