Getting the hump with a sweet marketing idea

“Does the boy actually lie on top of you?”

“Ah … generally.”

“What actually happens once you’ve taken your undies off?”

“Hey! Who wants a pink Nintendo DS for Christmas?”

“Do you have baby every single time you do it?”

“Um … no.”

“Well, why would anyone do it if they’re not going to have a baby?”

And so it went. As a product of an agnostic rationalist upbringing I felt obliged to give at least semi-accurate answers, but by the time the inquisition ended, the girls had decided they’d live together and never let a single boy anywhere near their undies.

I re-lived this sense of relief when I saw yet another complaint about how big business is turning our children into Lolitas and little Lotharios.

According to Brit Simon Simpkins, his wife was close to collapse and he was close to fisticuffs when he realised that the sweets he had just bought for his children were plastered with a fruit-themed version of the Karma Sutra.

The MAOAM lollies – which is something you may or may not yell when coupling with a pineapple – showed a lemon and a lime exchanging juices in a frenzy of citric carnality.

“The lime, whom I assume to be the gentleman in this coupling, has a particularly lurid expression on his face,” Mr Simpkins said.

Interestingly, a spokesman for the lolly company said “this jovial MAOAM man is very popular with fans, both young and old” which may actually lend support to Mr Simpkins complaint.

Really though, is a depiction of some fruit getting it on really going to plant the seeds of underage sex in kids’ minds? Hardly.

Is it going to cause teenagers to obsess about sex and how on Earth to get it? Undoubtedly – but so will chimneys, trains racing into tunnels, waves exploding on rocks and a giant pair of fawn-coloured undies fluttering on a clothes line.

And will it cause mature adults to switch off Inspector Rex and re-ignite their love lives with a major session of marital togetherness?

God, I hope so. It’s Friday and I’m off to get some wine, a bunch of flowers and a packet of MAOAM.