It is possibly the greatest male pastime of them all – the masturbatory fantasy. Where do your thoughts wander to as you tug the T-bone? Perhaps you fantasise about that bored young housewife next door doing her household chores, and imagine bending her across the ironing board and giving her one from behind. Or perhaps you wander further afield, to the realms of getting it off with famous showbiz totty (which of Girls Aloud is your masturbatory fantasy?). In the first of an occaisional series, The Sleaze investigates the world of celebrity wanking – just what do the rich and famous think of as they are “feeding the ducks”? Do they harbour the same sordid fantasies as we mere mortals, or do they reach a higher level of fulfilment? To kick off this feature, ‘Off The Wrist’ this time looks at the mastubatory fantasies of seventies glam-rock icon Marc Bolan.

Bolan was an acknowledged master of paddling the pink canoe – fellow glam-rocker Noddy Holder is reputed to have called him “the biggest wanker in the business”. According to those who knew him at the time, the T-Rex singer dedicated much of his short life to perfecting his white water wristing techniques. “Every spare moment he had, he liked to practice”, recollects Wizzard’s Roy Wood. “He liked to jerk the gherkin in rhythm with whatever was playing on the radio – I once saw him keep it going all through Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Indeed, some have claimed that it was Bolan’s devotion to Madam Palm and her five sisters that led to his demise, with unconfirmed reports that he was shifting the stick when he lost control of his Mini Cooper, resulting in a fatal crash.

Next to riding the baloney pony, Bolan’s abiding interest was magic and the occult. Indeed, bisexual Bolan – who included the late “Carry On” star Kenneth Williams amongst his male lovers – once claimed to have shagged a wizard in a Paris hotel room, although it is not clear whether he meant that he had had sex with a black magician or the whole of Roy Wood’s band. His one-time girlfriend, Trixie Tenpin, has claimed that Bolan confided to her that many of his masturbatory fantasies involved magic, a favourite being that he could control the weather with his penis. However, this paraticular masturbatory fantasy became an obsession for Bolan after a bizarre incident in 1973. Whilst having a sly hand solo in his hotel room between performances, lightning suddenly struck a tree outside the window. It was literally a bolt from the blue, as there was not a cloud in the sky. Bolan was badly shaken by the experience, and insisted that in future lightning conductors be erected wherever he was spanking the plank. “He became somewhat paranoid”, Tenpin says. “He began to suspect that his cock was somehow attracting the elements. From that moment on he took to wearing rubber underwear and rubber soled shoes to insulate himself.”

Bolan’s ultimate monkey spanking experience came in 1975, when he decided to put the power of his ham shanking to the test. He determined to vigourously polish his rocket during a rare alignment of Neptune, Jupiter and Venus. He reasoned that if his hampton was as powerful as he suspected, then jacking off at the moment of alignment would cause catastrophic events such as tidal waves and earthquakes. Locking himself in the luxurious master bedroom of his Hampstead mansion, Bolan prepared himself for the great moment – carefully rubbing vaseline gel into his hands so as to avoid a dangerous build up of friction during his pork pounding. However, this was to prove his undoing. As he neared his climax, groaning in anticipation and violently shaking the bed, his hands slipped, causing him to miss a stroke, resulting in him icing his fingers a minute too late. Consequently, there were no earthquakes or tidal waves recorded that night, although Iggy Pop’s toilet apparently collapsed as he was dropping a particularly large log at the exact moment Bolan climaxed his performance. “Marc was very dejected”, Tenpin told us. “But he never gave up on his ideas and kept scanning the astrological charts, waiting for another major planetary conjunction.” Alas, the grim reaper intervened before he was able to complete his experiments.