Erotic editor wins bad sex prize

Hall: 'Bad sex writing is like bad sex - better than nothing'

Novelist Christopher Hart has won the 2001 Bad Sex in Fiction award for his novel Rescue Me.

Mr Hart, who is also the literary editor of the Erotic Review, was presented with the award by Jerry Hall at a ceremony on Tuesday evening.

Her hand is moving away from my knee and heading north - towards the pole

Christopher Hart
Rescue Me

The presentation was held at the Naval and Military Club in St James's, London - a venue known to its members as the "In and Out Club".

The annual award is organised by the Literary Review, and was founded by the literary critics Rhoda Koenig and the late Auberon Waugh in 1993.

'Pleasure'

Presenting the award, a semi-abstract statue representing sex in the 1950s, Jerry Hall said: "Bad sex writing is like bad sex - both are better than nothing.

"It gives me great pleasure to present someone with an award for bad sex.

"I usually present them with divorce papers."

The winning passage by Christopher Hart used an extended polar exploration metaphor to describe an amorous encounter.

'Twitching'

"Her hand is moving away from my knee and heading north. Heading unnervingly and with a steely will towards the pole," he wrote.

"And, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Pamela will not easily be discouraged. I try twitching, and then shaking my leg, but to no avail.

"Ever northward moves her hand, while she smiles languorously at my right ear.

Waugh: Disliked 'crude, tasteless' sex in novels

"And when she reaches the north pole, I think in wonder and terror - she will surely want to pitch her tent," reads the passage from Rescue Me.

Last year the prize was won by Sean Thomas for his novel Kissing England - and presented by Jerry Hall's ex-husband Mick Jagger.

Previous winners have included AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks and Melvyn Bragg.

Auberon Waugh, who died in January at the age of 61 and was the son of the writer Evelyn Waugh, once said that the prize was intended to highlight "the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of sexual description in the modern novel - and to discourage it".