Do I really need to explain this week’s subject matter? The rise of net porn has elevated the humble wank to a status beyond all imagining. As we shall see, however, past societies have not always been so kind to the masturbator. For the sake of academic gravity, you can study more here. Note the cute product placement further down.

We’ll be hearing from Al Needham, (left), who’s in fine form as usual. And in the studio we’ve got Dolly Ginsberg, girl about town and all-round creative artiste, who will, among other things, be explaining the similarity between having one off the wrist and the family-friendly pastime known as DIY.

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Midnight Sex Talk this week was a feast of information. A big thank you to clinical geneticist Dr Adam Shaw for explaining so much so clearly.

We started off by talking about The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan (1978), which I think, for a lot of people, was a seminal early introduction to incest; in literature and elsewhere. I well remember the smells from that book, and the giggles at school.

You’ll here the word consanguinity a lot. A consanguineous marriage is between any blood-related people, but not necessarily closely; it’s more accepted in some cultures than others. It improves the odds of genetic diseases in children, and the more closely related you are, the worse it gets. The basic medical conclusion is, if you’re going to have an incestuous affair, for god’s sake don’t have children.

The flipside of Genetic Sexual Attraction is called the Westermarck effect. Have a look at the studies of kibbutz children and Chinese arranged marriages, where tiny girls were sent off to the future boy-husband’s family for pre-marital conditioning. The studies tell us that familiarity breeds contempt, and after growing up together as children, most people would rather go and live in a poorly-heated shed at the South Pole than get it together as man and wife.

We also played a clip from Chinatown. If you haven’t seen it, go and get it now.

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Originally aired June 19th 2005.

“We had a packed Midnight Sex Talk on Sunday, so packed that I didn’t get a chance to go off on one about some of my past experiences. Probably just as well, really. ‘Ollie’ talked us through life of a bisexual man, and Marc from Bicon told us about this year’s bisexual shindig in Worcester, 25-29th August. Any excuse for a party – it’s not all about activism. Mind you, as we know, anyone who doesn’t have a strict gay-or-straight identity gets their share of attitude, from both sides. We all need a safe space now and again.

Emily Dubberley, very busy author of the recently published Brief Encounters – The Women’s Guide To Casual Sex, gave us the lowdown on bi-curiosity.

No show about bisexuality could avoid mentioning David Bowie, and the alleged caught-in-bed-with-Mick-Jagger story, despite the fact that his public declaration in the early seventies can be seen as a bit of a publicity stunt. Whatever whatever, he inspired a lot of people. As did Tom Robinson, who had the balls to sing about being gay long before anyone else did, and then had the even bigger balls to change direction and take the flak for it.”

And Dr Who now has a bisexual character, inter-galactic time-traveller Captain Jack Harkness. In a way, how could a time-traveller be anything other than bi? See also: Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. SpongeBob Squarepants put in an appearance, as did Top Cat.

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What a superb line-up on Midnight Sex Talk this week! For a start, we achieved a most enlightening encounter with The Reverend D Wayne Love of Alabama 3, who spoke from the upstairs room about his extensive exploits with the ladies. There’s something very special he likes done with a toothbrush, girls!

We also managed to get the sublime Marianne Hyatt on the phone, who’s up in Edinburgh right now in satirical cabaret A Girl Called George, and who has a very useful technique for getting groupies to back off. We garnered drunken quotes from a wide selection of musicians, who pretty much agreed that The Code Of The Road (see Rule #1) still holds good. (Above, the Reverend, taken from efestivals.co.uk where yet more divine portraits are available as e-cards.)

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This week on Midnight Sex Talk we’re taking you on a journey from body piercing to full-on labiaplasty. For decorative purposes, or a fetish, people do all sorts of striking but painful-looking things to themselves: Warning! This is not for the squeamish!. Actually, nor are these: split tongue, decorative penile implants and split penis.

But on the ‘medical’ side of things, an increasing number of people, (mostly women, but not all), are opting to have their most cherished erogenous zones cut into, for the sake of – um, what? In the West, we get very agitated, and rightly so, about Female Genital Mutilation as practised in parts of Africa and the Middle East. But, if you take the Martian perspective, you might well ask yourself why women in the supposedly free and educated West are actively volunteering to have similar things done to themselves, albeit in a more hygienic environment.

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Alex Fitch is joining us again to talk about the strange anomalies in movie censorship. And have a look at the censor-watch site, The Melonfarmers, which just found itself in the finals of the Erotic Awards. As did we! \o/

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Click here to download Midnight Sex Talk, aired 3rd July 05