I thought the main thing Britons needed to worry about in the bedroom was bad sex. The late Hungarian-born author George Mikes famously wrote: "Continental people have sex lives; the British have hot-water bottles." No wonder we Brits sometimes struggle to keep the flagstaff upright and the pennant flying. The last thing we needed was some medics warning the nation about dangerous sex in a journal slyly entitled Advances in Urology.
After my eight-year stint editing The Erotic Review, I thought hazardous intercourse generally meant being caught in bed with someone else's spouse. Either that, or forgetting your safe word mid-flogging. But it seems even we sexperts can be perilously naive. A bunch of doctors and academics have taken it upon themselves to monitor three busy hospitals' A&E departments to find out which coital position leads to most "penile fractures". If you're anything like me, you'll be wincing by now and thinking: "Blimey, is that even a thing?" No matter that I lack the relevant apparatus, what else is empathy for? It reminds me of the time my brother told me about spontaneous combustion and I thought: "Seriously? Do I have to worry about this now, too?"
And - wouldn't you know it? - the most dangerous position (for men, that is) is deemed to be woman on top, or what our US friends sweetly call "The Cowgirl". One small step for urologists, but three steps back for womankind - we women like to be in charge of our pleasure now and then, and for gym-haters like me, it's the only exercise we ever get.
What are a few cracks in the groin versus the vastly reduced risk of cardiac arrests in frisky women? More importantly, where will this sex-policing end? Will Health and Safety be installing laminated notices in every bedroom in the land? The Joy of Sex's beardy man will have to issue hazard warnings as he moans beneath his hippie love? In these testing economic times, sex is one free pleasure we can all enjoy - as long as the men with the clipboards stop staring over our shoulders.
But before despair sets in, I would dispute that these are properly rigorous scientific findings. If these doctors really wanted to ascertain the most dangerous configurations known to sexual gymnasts, they would have purchased a copy of the Kama Sutra, bribed 20 intrepid students, and worked their way through the extraordinarily varied carnal suggestions in this 2,000-year-old volume - thus making Masters and Johnson look like rank amateurs.
Penguin Classics publish a fine translation by the diplomat and scholar A?N?D Haskar, and you only need to glance at the chapters on "Scratching" and "Biting" to realise how much more terrifying sex can become. As for "Unusual Sex", you can find that on page 54, and it's a darn sight more testing than taking your husband for a trot. The "Suspended Union" surely calls for an orthopaedic surgeon to be on standby, while I don't think any of us want to dwell on "the elephant's crush".
Nor do the scientists seem to have analysed the terrain so doggedly explored in 50 Shades of Grey. You'd think gags and restraints might make S&M fans more susceptible to a groin injury. I can't help wondering whether the four patients reported in the study to have been injured in "unclear" circumstances were just too cowed to report their dominatrix. Of course, you can get around that problem by following Christian Grey's example and issuing a contract.
But how dreary life will become if our bedroom pleasures get constrained by the kind of small print, terms and conditions, that's ruining everything else in modern life. Erotic injuries should be treated like the ones sustained on the playing fields at school. The games mistress yells: "Get up Pelling! You'll live," and, after a few groans, you're right back in the fray.
