Let’s talk about sex. We might as well, everybody else seems to be chattering on about it feverishly. Sex and fish fingers.

Unlikely conversation partners but hey, we’re always up for a challenge, right? Put the kettle on, Mother. Crack open the Jaffa Cakes while you’re at it – this could take some time.

Tim Farron, Lib Dem leader and MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, has been landed uncomfortably in hot water.

Over sex. Not for doing it where he shouldn’t have been, you understand. No, the bother has been about him talking about it – or not talking enough about it – and perhaps thinking about it – though not all the time or he’d get nothing more constructive done.

And this is a busy time for people like him. Beats me what all the fuss is about. Could be life has been a tad too sheltered, but I’m as confused as a harlot in a monastery.

Not that I’ve known many harlots, was never brave enough to be one and haven’t spent any time in a monastery – yet.


Anne Pickles It’s same-sex sex that has been at the root of Mr Farron’s trouble. Or his personal attitude to it, to be absolutely accurate. Which is about as daft as anything’s likely to get in an already potty election campaign.

It’s neither here nor there what any party leader’s views on sex are, you might think. It’s what the law thinks that counts and since Tim Farron has voted consistently to protect and progress gay rights in law, what’s the beef?

Ah but where there’s sex, there’s usually a beef. It’s the ultimate distracting attention-grabber, sex is.

Always was. Probably always will be. Remarkable really, for something so, you know… commonplace? I mean it’s hardly new, is it?

Gay, straight, marital, extra-marital, too much, not enough, thinking, talking, sniggering, moralising – and trying not to – all of it older than Methuselah’s hang-ups. Move on. Nothing fresh to see here.

Anyway, our Tim, a committed Christian, has been badgered repeatedly to commit to declaring gay sex sinful or otherwise, this being election time, with original sin and Old Testament policies figuring prominently on some skewed voting agendas – and Methuselah being offline and out of reach for helpful manifesto advice.

And to add to his discomfort, he is being challenged in his constituency by a fish finger. Never rains but it pours, eh?

The mysterious Mr Finger’s views on sex are as yet unknown. Maybe nobody asked him. Perhaps his opinions have been frozen for the time being. Or is he just a cold fish?

Some reckon Tim Farron could have avoided the worst of the recent political/ theological heat had he been a lot clearer, much earlier about his personal opinions.

Like, for instance, with a statement saying: “I have no problem with same-sex sex, so long as it isn’t made compulsory.”

That might have done it. At least, when turned on its head, it cuts both ways – if you see what I mean. No smut intended.

And gay people know more than most about the sins of enforcement against nature. No guarantees though. Nothing sells distraction quite as well as a hefty serving of what matters not a jot.

In the thick of a frenzied, snap call to electoral arms, the sex question was bound to be raised at some point. It probably will be again in some form or other.

Seems a shame to get all excited about it, when there’s so much else to concentrate the mind. But human nature being as it is, there’s no avoiding the same-as-it-ever-was.

There’s an old joke about a man – could be a woman – who’s advised by a GP to cut their obsessional sex life by half, in the interests of full physical and emotional health. “But what does that mean, Doctor?” asks the patient. “Should I stop talking about it or thinking about it?”

In terms of an all-important general election campaign, there really is only one answer. “Yes.”