Sex. Tons of it about. Only I don’t seem to be getting much of it myself. Well, not the sort that everyone else seems to be getting. Don’t get me wrong; my love life is not a disaster. I have long settled into a satisfying schedule of indoor fireworks. It’s just that I’m constantly reminded that other people’s sex lives go with a bigger bang – all giant catherine wheels and Jean Michel Jarre lasers.

In the newspapers, celebrities kiss-and-tell about their wild dalliances with other glamorous alpha beings. In magazines, journalists embark on intrepid missions to the underbelly of British sex (men’s mags), and run how-to manuals on the continual spicing-up of one’s love life (women’s). Ever since 9½ Weeks, any film with a 15 certificate or higher must include a sex scene that involves food fetishism, light bondage and multiple orgasms. And we all know what devilry befouls the highways of the internet. Everywhere I turn, people seem to be pushing boundaries, bending genders and swapping roles. But not me.

The situation might be easier if I actually knew someone who enjoyed one of these modern sex lives. They could supply me with the occasional titbit of salacious gossip, and I could gain some vicarious pleasure from it all. Barring one friend, who likes to frustrate me with her same-sex fantasies (exactly none of which she has followed through), my mates’ pub chat is rather low on illicit threesomes and ritualistic orgies. No whipping, no dogging, no rinding (I’m not even sure what rinding is – I think it involves bacon and string, but I can’t be sure). Which leads me to the question: is anybody having the glamorous, adventurous, voluminous sex that we hear so much about?

Despite the continuous groans of ecstasy escaping from the media, I rather suspect that the answer is no. Like so many of the visions of life that glare at us from television screens and billboards, modern sex is a stylised dream concocted by advertising agencies and Hollywood studios. Sex has long been a stick with which industry has beaten the consumers’ brow to manufacture desire, but the modern publicity machine has become so pervasive that its vision of life defines what it is to be normal. And so the stylised vision of sex – all satin blindfolds and ice cubes on the nipples – becomes the apparent norm. Everyone, it would appear, is doing it, so why aren’t we?

To be sexually active is to be normal. To explore one’s fantasies (within the boundaries of good taste) is healthy. To admit to anything less is an admission of failure and a sign of inadequacy. As a man, I must maintain a voracious sexual appetite and perform mutually satisfying routines with the precision of a porn star. My partner must be willing to transform herself into a burlesque madam, carefully negotiating the boundaries between adventurous lover and all-out slut, packaged throughout in expensive designer underwear. All of which makes the traditional half-hour missionary bonk, followed by a kiss and a cuddle, rather mundane. The bar has been raised and we must stretch ourselves accordingly; to aspire to anything less is to let down both yourself and your other half.

As a child of the early 1980s, I was brought up on far lower sexual aspirations. With no internet, my sexual entertainment was confined to grubby copies of Paul Raymond’s Escort and Razzle found in my local park. In these magazines, the chubby girls of Leicester flaunted their boobs in the Sainsbury’s car park, while readers’ wives flashed their hairy bits, bending over Formica tables in naff MFI kitchens with the evening’s stew bubbling on the hob. This being the prePhotoshop era, the girls had pasty, white flesh, rippled with cellulite, marked by ungroomed pubic hair. Girls struck poses of the Carry On variety – naughty-but-nice glimpses of the forbidden. The readers’ letters, though obviously works of fiction, were based in the real world – housewives seducing the window cleaner, grubby mechanics taking payment for MOTs on the back seat of the Capri. The modern sexual fantasy is set on a luxury speedboat, with flawless models sipping Cristal champagne and wearing Gucci bikinis, as brought to us by the endless bling of MTV.

Sexual decadence occupies so much of the subtext of advertising that it has become a form of oppression, a source of anxiety. I see an advert for Wall’s Magnum in which a woman slowly fellates the tip of the ice cream while Barry White purrs on the backing track. It reminds me that eating Magnums is a sensual experience, and that I should eat one when I next feel like indulging myself. But it also reminds me that there are apparently millions of beautiful, glamorous people engaging in sexual acts right now, the intensity and fabulousness of which I could only dream of. The initial sensation ispleasant, but the titillation soon subsides into a wave of disappointment, as the reality of my own rather banal life becomes clear. The solution to this misery, it would seem, is to buy more ice cream.

Having only recently escaped from centuries of sexual repression, we English have become rather nouveau riche about sex – flaunting ourselves, wearing our sexuality on our sleeve, gossiping endlessly about who is doing what to whom – conspicuously attempting to keep up with the chandelier-swinging Joneses.

The modern fables of sexual glamour tend to enjoy longer shelf lives than most media-driven fallacies because, sex being a largely private act, one can boast, imply and assume without having to prove a thing. If you brag to your mates that you’ve bought a flash motor, said mates will expect you to come up with the goods. But common decency prohibits a request of proof of a three-in-a-bed romp. And so, the media-driven charade continues, reinforcing the myth that the cornerstones of normal modern sex are frequency, variety and debauchery, which has as much bearing on real life as the readers’ letters in Razzle.

Allow me to break from tradition, then, and confess to the world that my sex life falls way short of modern expectations. I don’t care. I am prepared to commit social suicide and admit to a number of embarrassing personal truths. The more I admit to them, the less humiliating they’ll become.

1 I sometimes go for weeks without sex, and it doesn’t bother me.

2 I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 19; it was rather disappointing when I did.

3 Far from being a turn-on, neither ice cubes nor candle wax on the extremities feels nice at all.

4 I’ve often felt lonelier during one-night stands than staying at home on my own.

5 I’ve eaten dozens of Wall’s Magnum ice creams, and not once has the experience reminded me of sex.

Extracted from The Idler: Carnal Knowledge (Ebury Press £10.99). Bonfire of the Brands by Neil Boorman (Canongate £12.99) is on sale now