THIS time of year usually belongs to the Turner Prize. Indeed, the 2005 results, to be announced on Monday, will no doubt occupy many dutiful column inches. But on Thursday night an altogether more raucous prize-giving ceremony took centre stage: the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

The organisers describe it as the hottest ticket in literary London. And while it may not be quite as important as the Man Booker — yet — the champagne-fuelled ceremony on Thursday was packed with some of the biggest names in publishing, including the philosopher A. C. Grayling, the dramatist John Mortimer and the historian Andrew Roberts.

The winner was clearly thrilled. Giles Coren, of The Times, collected the award from a fellow Times columnist, the transvestite artist Grayson Perry, who was dressed for the occasion in a black frock with suitably erotic embellishments. The winning passage was a frenzied encounter from Coren’s novel Winkler, featuring a complicated shower metaphor and a climax involving Zorro. He gave a lively acceptance speech, brought down the house with a gnomic in-joke about John Updike and bounded off stage clutching his marble foot of Hermes (apparently it represents “Sex in the 1950s”). For Coren, as for other authors who understand the importance of healthy self-deprecation, a Bad Sex has become a rite of passage. The award was devised 13 years ago by Auberon (“Bron”) Waugh, the Editor of the Literary Review at the time, who noted, quite reasonably, how too many otherwise good literary novels were being ruined by the inclusion of inexcusably bad sex. The sex was there by necessity, or so the publishers believed, but so often it did the authors no favours. The idea was to poke gentle fun at the perpetrators and to discourage further incompetent literary fumblings.

But it seems that his plan may have backfired, because the award grows in popularity.Salman Rushdie, whose name was on the longlist this year, has been proudly trumpeting his inclusion. His was a valiant effort, but not nearly as cringe-producing as Coren’s Zorro- inspired masterstroke.

The secret of the success of the award is that, unlike its high-gloss counterparts, it rewards inadequacy, and we can all identify with that. And, perhaps most admirably, the award is no respecter of age or literary status or health: previous winners have included Tom Wolfe, Sebastian Faulks and Melvyn Bragg. This year the longlist included Updike and Marlon Brando.

PURPLE PROSE

And he **** **** in her ***** and his **** jumped around and ******* on her ***** and he blacked *** and she **** his **** out of her ***** and lifted ******* from his **** and ******* the pillow away and he ****** and ******* at the air, and he **** again so **** that his **** ******** out of her **** and a **** of it *** him straight in the *** and ***** like ******* he’d ever *** in *****, and he yelled with the pain, but the **** could have been

********, and as she ******* at his ****, which was ******* around like a ****** dropped in an ***** ****, she ********* his **** deeply with the ***** of both **** and he **** three **** times, in ***** ****** on *** chest. Like Zorro.

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