Best selling author Horace Rutlam has this week found himself forced to vigourously defend his new book Sex Lives of the Saints, which has been condemned by both religious and political leaders as being ‘offensive’ and even ‘blasphemous’. “Whether these God botherers like it or not, before they were canonised, all of these saints were human and therefore possessed of all the same worldly and physical passions and desires as other men and women,” the author contends. “My book is a perfectly legitimate examination of the mortal frailties underlying the supposedly divine.” Nonetheless, religious figures continue to dismiss the book as cheap sensationalism, peddling lies and rumours in an attempt to sully the names of some of Christianity’s most beloved figures. “This is clearly just another anti-religious tract from an author with a track record of smearing the church,” declares the Anglican Bishop of Bracknell. “Just look at the titles of some of his previous books: Toilet Habits of the Pontiffs, Bashing the Archbishops: Masturbatory Fantasies of the Great and Holy and Sex and the Single Nun, to name but a few. Just how does he keep getting this distasteful filth published? There should be a law against it!” Senior Catholic clerics have joined the chorus of disapproval, with the Bishop of Scunthorpe questioning whether there truly is any public interest in the subject matter of Rutlam’s books. !I ask you, who cares about the bodily functions of the blessed? Such things are generally disgusting and not talked about for good reason, even those of ordinary people,” he says. “The books are obviously simply an attempt to get people to imagine the likes of his Holiness sat on the crapper, thereby destroying any idea of his divinity and making him a figure of ridicule!”

Rutlam, however, maintains that he is merely trying to establish the true humanity of figures otherwise seen as remote and other worldly. “The church should be thanking me,” he says. “In demonstrating the human foibles of the great and divine, I’m making them much more accessible figures for the man-on-the-street. It is far easier for an ordinary bloke to identify with someone they know harbours sexual desires, ogles women, takes a dump and scratches their arse than it is with someone who is unfailingly virtuous and the epitome of spiritual perfection, who never suffers the temptations of the flesh. Consequently, they are surely far more likely to go back to the church if they can feel that it is full of blokes like them!” His approach, the author feels, is equally applicable to women. “Let’s not forget that the church is patriarchy and therefore very intimidating for women – all those stern-faced male authority figures apparently resistant to their womanly charms,” muses Rutlam. “But if, thank to my investigations, they are able to think that the holier-than-thou priest presiding over mass or hearing confession is secretly thinking that he’d like to throw them over the altar and give them a bloody good seeing to, or that the saints looking down on them in stone effigy had, in life, regularly shagged anything with breasts, then they will at least be able to feel that the patriarchy has a human face. That it, in some way, actually values their presence. They can be reassured that becoming a chaste nun, locked away from carnality, isn’t the only way to be a woman valued by the faith. Especially if they know that those nuns also secretly indulged their passions with a ‘Twelve Apostles Dildo Set’.”

Rutlam’s latest tome, Sex Lives of the Saints, looks into the supposed sexual proclivities of a dozen of Christendom’s most popular saints, before concluding with a chapter on the twelve apostles. The claims made in the book are highly controversial, with a number of historians casting doubt upon their veracity. “To be frank, I’d say that many of the stories of the sexual exploits of these saints that Rutlam relates are, at best, speculation, based upon the slimmest historical foundations,” opines Professor Clement Tockler, Chair of Erotic History at Caterham College for Horticulture and Plant Husbandry. “In particular, his claims that St Sebastian’s attempted execution by arrows was symbolic of his practice of piquerism – the practice of obtaining a sexual thrill from piercing the body of another with sharp objects – seems to have no known basis in fact. I have found no documentary sources for Rutlam’s claims that Sebastian had been caught sticking needles in the behinds of various high born Roman women prior to the attack.” Similarly, Tockler argues that the beheading of John the Baptist is, in no way, symbolic of the fact that he was alleged to give ‘good head’ and had ‘baptised’ Salome in a ‘shower of gold’.

The part of the book which has caused greatest offence, though, is the chapter concerning the twelve apostles, with its allegations of their participation in wild drunken parties and ‘gang bangs’ involving multiple prostitutes. “It’s an absolute outrage – an assault upon the very heart of our faith,” splutters the Bishop of Scunthorpe. “If this blasphemer is to be believed, the Last Supper was some kind of pissed up ‘send off’ for Our Saviour before he went to his crucifixion, with the apostles snorting drugs and shagging women on the table, all presided over by a beatific Christ! At least he had the decency not to involve Jesus himself in the shenanigans – although having him as an apparently approving spectator is bad enough!” Rutlam has defended his depiction of the Last Supper, contending that it is entirely in line with the teachings of Christ. “Wasn’t he all about love? It’s just that the church doesn’t want you to know that it was ‘free love’ that he was advocating – he was the original hippie, after all, with all that hair and the beard,” He says. “It was only natural that he would want to lay on a whole orgy of love for his most faithful followers on the eve of his crucifixion. As for the drugs – well, what better way to open the doors to heaven?”

Unsurprisingly, the controversy has done little to harm sales of the book, but rather boosted its sales. “You can’t buy publicity like this,” remarks Rutlam. “The God Squad never learns – the more they condemn things and rail against them, the more it makes them want to read them! They really should read their own bloody book – it has a whole bit about temptation and forbidden fruit!” Rutlam is already planning his next book, tentatively entitled Sins of the Father, which he claims will explore the question of whether Jesus was sexually abused by either his real or adoptive fathers. “Just why was he adopted, eh?” asks Rutlam. “Was it a placement by the celestial social services? Well, you’ll just have to buy the book when it comes out to discover the truth!”