The Sex Detectors

“I was just getting to the vinegar stroke when there was this huge flash, accompanied by a bang, and these armed policemen came crashing through the bedroom door and window,” recalls Marcus Thropstock, who last month found he and his girlfriend falling foul of the UK lockdown’s so called ‘sex ban’. “I mean, for God’s sake I hadn’t had any for months because we were living in separate houses when the lockdown was imposed, but I finally thought that I was going to get my end away – then we find ourselves being arrested mid-coitus! Is nothing bloody sacred?” Thropstock – who received a £200 fine for his illicit sexual activities – is one of a number of Britons who found themselves in breach of the government’s edict that, during the lockdown, it would be breaking the rules to have sexual relations with someone who was not a member of your household. But the question that Thropstock and other victims are asking is: how did the authorities know that they were breaking the sex ban? “Do they have an army of snoopers out there, or maybe a fleet of ‘sex detector’ vans?” he asks. “Whatever means they are using, it is just damned creepy, not to mention a gross infringement of our civil liberties!”

In fact, the thirty two year old Guildford computer salesman isn’t that far off the mark, as a source inside the Department of Health revealed to The Sleaze. “We do indeed use so called ‘sex detector’ vans – a bit like the old TV detector vans used to identify unlicensed TVs in peoples’ houses,” they told us. “They prowl the streets at night, looking for unusually high thermal signatures from bedrooms, as this might indicate that someone was having sex there. By cross-referencing the suspected address against the electoral register, we can find out if it is a single occupancy household or not. In which case, there shouldn’t be any sex going on there.” The source conceded that this represented a rather unrefined methodology. “The problem comes with houses of multiple occupancy, where these might not be couples,” they explained. “How then, do we tell if the sexual activity involves someone from outside of the household?” This, the source claims, is where Britain’s army of busy bodies and snoopers come in. “Very early on, we realised that it would be essential that we mobilised them to spy on their neighbours,” they mused. “After all, early on in the lockdown, we saw plenty of such people willing to inform on the supposed lockdown transgressions of others, reporting them for exercising out side twice in one day, or walking to a park other than the nearest one to go for a walk.”

Critics of the government’s policy, however, have claimed that far more sinister measures were originally planned to enforce the ‘sex ban’. “According to my information, the police were being prepared to try and regulate the nation’s sex life,” opines Liberal Democrat MP and civil liberties campaigner Norman Bakewell. “We know that there were plenty of police forces prepared to go to extreme lengths to enforce the lockdown, gleefully following dog walkers with drones and threatening to inspect people’s shopping in order the check that they were only buying essential items. Is it so fanciful to imagine this being extended to having drones – possibly fitted with infrared cameras – hovering outside bedroom windows, or singles having their shopping searched for condoms and lube?” Bakewell believes that it was only the public backlash against heavy handed police enforcement of the lockdown which eventually discouraged the government from involving them more with the ‘sex ban’. Which isn’t to say that they didn’t have an indirect involvement. “Let’s face it, the police wouldn’t necessarily have to resort to using anything as sophisticated as drones for sex snooping: they could just consult the local sex offenders register instead, identify the local voyeurs and peeping toms and enlist their help,” muses Bakewell. “I’m sure that these deviants would jump at the chance to see their work legitimised and its ‘value’ recognised by the authorities.”

Bakewell has also suggested that the government had a series of public information films on the sex ban prepared. “They apparently had a whole campaign of films planned,” he reveals. “All focused on encouraging people to listen to their neighbours’ nocturnal activities via a glass placed against the party wall, or to deploy themselves in the shrubbery, with their binoculars trained on their neighbour’s bedroom windows.” The films were scrapped at the last minute, with the government fearing a backlash against what could have been construed as official sanctioning of voyeurism. Instead, a second public information scheme was devised, this time designed to encourage masturbation as a lockdown alternative to sexual intercourse. “There were definitely plans to issue an official guide to more satisfactory masturbation during isolation, for the benefit of those on their own,” says Bakewell. “It was to be sent to every household and endorsed by the Chief Medical Officer, Chris Witty. It was to have been packed full of helpful hints and tips about how to construct your own wanking machines from household objects. That sort of thing.” There were also plans to have Chris Witty address the issue at one of the coronavirus daily updates, where he would have elaborated on the range of masturbatory techniques available, including mechanical stimulation and the use of fruit. The whole campaign was dropped after complaints from the Catholic church.

But could there have been any circumstances under which non-same household sex would have been OK? Labour back bench MP and sex therapist Arnold Rump believes that there were. “If it was dome at two metres distance in the open air. Then sexual intercourse between non-cohabiting couples wouldn’t be in contravention of this ‘sex ban’,” he declares. “Now, I know what you are thinking – that’s only going to work for the handful of people endowed like John Holmes. But I’m sure that the government could have issued one of its guides, this one detailing how to mount a dildo on a two metre stick and how best to manipulate it, with additional tips about using a cock ring on a long string for women to remotely pleasure men.” Rump believes that such an initiative could have given ‘dogging’ a whole new lease of life. “Except that some police forces would, undoubtedly, have been busy setting up roadblocks to stop punters from making ‘non-essential’ car journeys to popular ‘dogging; spots,” he says.