The Daily Telegraph

No bad sex, please. We’re politician­s

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‘It’s not actually about sex,” Sir Vince Cable said of his debut thriller, Open Arms, earlier this year, which tells the story of a love affair between a British politician and the heir to an Indian arms manufactur­er. “The sex is very discreet – it’s not going to win the Bad Sex Award.”

As it turns out, the Lib Dem leader was right. Although the novel allegedly received so “many” nomination­s, The Literary Review, which organises the yearly prize, has declared the book inadmissib­le, “simply because its author is a Member of Parliament”.

Neither my friends in publishing nor the two MPS I checked in with yesterday had the faintest idea that this rule existed – or why.

“I can only guess that anything involving sex and politics is now so firmly off limits, it can’t even be jeered at,” suggested one.

Which would be a shame (how on earth will we all fill our time…?), but surely not as great a shame as the one tweeted last night by a despondent Lib Dem – that, these days, “we can’t even win an award for being bad”.

 ??  ?? Sir Vince Cable: failed to make the Bad Sex Awards
Sir Vince Cable: failed to make the Bad Sex Awards

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