What a turn off

It is the award every self-respecting writer dreads - being branded bad in bed.

But yesterday novelist Wendy Perriam joined the exalted company of Melvyn Bragg and Salman Rushdie when she won the Bad Sex In Fiction title.

The dubious honour is given every year to the novelist responsible for the most cringeworthy sex scenes.

Perriam, 62, specialises in novels about sex-obsessed Catholics and took it for her latest work, Tread Softly.

The novel features some not-so-steamy lovemaking by a man in a smart suit.

She writes: 'Weirdly, he was clad in pinstripes at the same time as being naked. Pin stripes were erotic... Even Mr Hughes' penis had a seductive pin-striped foreskin.'

And what about this for eroticism: 'She cupped his pin-striped balls, felt him thrust more urgently. "Oh yes!" she shouted, screwing up her face in concentration... "Yes, oh Malcolm, yes!"'

Perriam beat other novelists including actor-turned-author Ethan Hawke, whose Ash Wednesday also failed to turn on the judges.

First presented in 1993, the award is organised by Literary Review magazine to lampoon 'crude and tasteless' writing.