THE SEX ISSUE
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13
more respectable than Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde writer Robert Louis Stevenson’s uncle David. He was a key member of the Scottish National Association for the Suppression of Licentiousness, a campaign against all vice, which included the banning of nude models at the city’s art school. Little did he know that his frail nephew liked nothing more than spending his prim father’s modest allowance on all the carnal pleasures available in the capital’s sex parlours.
Moving forward a century or so, David Anderson, a junior Scottish Office minister, was in 1973 convicted and fined £50 for stopping two 14-year-old girls and asking them to fulfill an S&M fantasy by walking over his naked body. This conviction, held up as a miscarriage of justice by Robin Cook and Malcolm Rifkind, became what the Scottish tabloid press dubbed ‘the Scottish Profumo Affair’. But it was only many years later that the final piece of the puzzle of this story fell into place. Anderson protested his innocence until his death in 1995. In 2010 Lady Judy Steel, wife of liberal leader Lord David Steel, went to the theatre to see John Hale’s largely sympathetic play The Case of David Anderson QC starring the mighty Corin Redgrave as Anderson. Not far into the play Lady Steel realised she recognised some of the dialogue from an incident in 1959, when, as an Edinburgh University fresher, she had been beckoned over to a man’s car near Edinburgh’s George Square and asked if she would stamp on him in stilettos. The play inspired her to retrospectively identify the man as Anderson. And finally there’s the case of the gardener, three nuns and a dog, or one particularly naughty scene from French erotic silent film Polissons et Galipette (The Good Old Naughty Days) which Edinburgh’s Filmhouse attempted to screen for ‘historical interest’ back in 2004. A storm in a teacup was whipped up by the Evening News, which debated whether the council should allow such filth to be screened, with particular reference to one key scene in which a dog willingly sucks off a priest. The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, various Edinburgh reverends and Scottish Women Against Pornography all weighed in. Dog blow- jobs aside, for a modern audience the film was only mildly titillating, and evidence now suggests that the furore was all to the benefit of Hamish McAlpine, the owner of the now defunct Tartan Films, who planned to reissue the films on DVD in the UK (though this never actually came to fruition).
There are more stories in the canon – tales of sexualised feline impersonations, of hot flushes and fainting fits – but they are for another day. With his penchant for alternative sex, Tommy Sheridan may be less atypical than we think, maybe he is just a man, a Scottish man.
14 THE LIST 3–17 Feb 2011
AND OUR SURVEY SAYS . . .
We asked 200 people – 100 in Glasgow and 100 in Edinburgh – to reveal all about their sex lives. The most interesting findings are shown below. You can see all the data from our survey online at www.list.co.uk
84%
of people in Glasgow have had a one-night stand, compared with 76% of people in Edinburgh. 77% of men enjoyed their one- night stand experiences, compared with 57% of women. ‘One was tolerable but the other two were drunken and clumsy. Of the bad ones, the first was boring, and the other was truly the most atrocious sex I’ve ever had in my life. Laughable. I reckon I have learned my lesson now and will behave myself from here on in.’
‘One-night stands are enjoyable in the same
way as masturbation, so ultimately a bit pointless – fun in an immediate sense,
but utterly unfulfilling.’
to have had more than 20 sexual partners in their lives. The average number of sexual partners per person was six in Glasgow and seven in Edinburgh. How many sexual partners is it appropriate to have in a lifetime?
5.6% 1–5 partners (5.6%)
29.8% 32%
12.9% 19.7%
5–10 partners (32%)
10–15 partners (19.7%) 15–20 partners (12.9%)
Over 20 partners (29.8%)
19% of people claimed
‘5–10 partners’ was the most popular answer for women (34% of women chose it), while ‘over 20 partners’ was the most popular answer for men (37% of men chose it).