“Complaints tend to be cross-generational and from both sexes. We had a lot from men over the BSkyB ad.”Complaints over the portrayal of women reached a high point last year but few were over the brazen imagery of the Wonderbra advertisement. “You have to ask whether `sex is power’ is an appropriate thing for children to see,” says Bill Lennon, spokesman for the ASA. It is more sexism and objectification of women that angers, such as the BSkyB ad for the film Indecent Proposal which featured a woman’s midriff clad only in knickers, with the caption: “The price is right, so they come on down.”Similarly the Disclosure poster (which has also run into trouble in Italy and France) has caused offence as much for the strapline “Sex is power” as the steamy photo. Judging from the ASA’s list of complaints, there have been few objections to sexy images in themselves. Of the many heads of the media-monster, billboard advertising is the most controversial simply because it is unavoidable unless passers-by walk with their eyes closed. A majority (64 per cent) in a Mori survey are prepared to tolerate the availability of hardcore porn via satellite in the home as long as it was inaccessible to children.But it’s another matter if ordinary people welcome the growing tendency to sell with sex as a signficant ingredient of this sexual freedom.

Why? Does this represent Britain unbuttoning the frock of its famous prudishness and catching up with some of its European counterparts? Is it a case of “more sex please, we’re British”, or merely a marketing frenzy in an increasingly competitive arena?Statistics show that in some ways society is becoming freer sexually: sex begins at a younger age, the number of partners people have has risen over the past 30 years, and last year the age of consent for homosexuals was lowered to 18. The BBC broadcast the second episode of a new sitcom, Game On, in which the tiresome central joke is “shagging”, and whether the two male flatmates will do it with their tasty female co-habitee. At times it is easy to feel the media requires a cold shower.Raunchy material and imagery in the mainstream has never been so prevalent. From the Wonderbra, Haagen-Dazs and Club 18-30 ads to endless pictures of semi-nude super models adorning covers of the burgeoning selection of blokey magazines, from a boxful of “improve your sex life” video guides to the cheeky soft porn of Channel 4’s late-night Friday show Eurotrash and thrusting tastelessness of The Word, there has quite simply been an awful lot more of it about in recent times. Down the road is a billposter plugging the recording debut of the 16-year-old violin prodigy Vanessa Mae, in which she stands thigh-high in the sea wearing a wet swimsuit and skimpy, clinging dress.
Last week Channel 4 ran repeated tasters for the Red Light Zone, its new series of Saturday late-viewing in which a male torso is daubed with a lipstick “X”, the camera works its way up to a female navel, a lascivious voice tempts us through a forbidding door.

THE cover lines of the current issue of a national magazine scream salaciously: “Tackling his Tackle”, “50 Lovers and Still Counting” and “Nannies on the Game” Phew. But this publication is not to be found on the newsagent’s top shelf, but much lower down, where its teenage readers can reach it. The magazine, More!, does not have a unique approach to its young female audience “Sex & You”, oozes Sugar, a rival. “Fwoarrrgh!” salivates Just Seventeen, “50 cute boys inside!” As for the women’s magazines, they might make a sex therapist blush. A bus-stop near this particular newsagents displays a poster for the new film Disclosure, with Demi Moore and Michael Douglas in a clinch that has proved so erotic the Advertising Standards Authority last week met to consider its nationwide removal. “It’s hard to believe they weren’t taking the mickey when they did it.”. “The girl in the Harmony ad tosses her hair so much she looks like a restive pony,” complains Elaine Hunt.