If thinking about parental copulation is a bit close to the bone, we can use the likes of Ryan Giggs to explore the lite version
Talking about sex is almost always interesting. Given that it's the only reason any of us exists, that ought to come as no surprise. But maybe it's a little bit remarkable that 75,000 people care about the minor indiscretions of one footballer enough to tweet it to the world. Why should Ryan Giggs's affair with a Big Brother contestant get people so agitated that it's led to debate in the House of Commons, and may even bring about a major overhaul of the law?
It's tempting to say that we're all just being silly – that it's distasteful even to mention the sexual secrets of famous people when troops are piling into Libya and there's a gargantuan ecological disaster taking place in Japan. But you could also take the view that if something throws so many people into such a spin, it must necessarily be serious.
How might this kind of mass effect be cooked up? First of all, it seems, you need a person with enough outstanding features to provoke high levels of admiration and envy in a large number of people. Two Big Brother contestants alone won't do it – you need at least one Ryan Giggs. This person must have such a high quotient of desirable qualities – physical prowess, intelligence, power – that you don't know whether you want to be them, to sleep with them, or to punch them in the face.
To this remarkable person you add a multitude of people who have doubts about the satisfactoriness of their own love lives. Would we like to have an affair? Or would it mess up our entire existence? And would sex be better if it took place in a swanky hotel? The possibilities of sex are so various that it would be unusual to find someone who was certain that their own sex life was as good as it could possibly be. Hence there will always be plenty of people available to make up this sort of vaguely dissatisfied mob. With stories like this we can find stuff out about what it would be like to do the things we aren't doing. Or even to hear about what happens to other people who are doing the same as us.
Members of this mob should also have a ravenous appetite for sexual secrets. This may, in part, be because sex itself was kept secret from us for quite some time and finally came as a bit of an eye opener. It will also, by extension, be because we can hardly bear to think about the private act that took place between our mum and dad in order to knock life into us. (Not to mention any other more or less secret sexual acts that may have taken place between the adults around us while we were growing up.) While we really don't want to know about what went on in the parental bedroom, it's hard to argue with the fact that this unnerving act has had very serious implications for us. It's a bit of an elephant in the brain. If thinking about parental copulation is a bit close to the bone, then we can at least use unfortunates like Giggs to explore the lite version and consider some less familiar couples in the sack.
So now we have all the things we need: a charismatic person – maybe a bit of a parent figure – a sexual act, and an ambivalent mob, teeming with questions and fantasies about sex. Let it stir itself up and witness an explosion of possibilities. Everyone is suddenly licensed to talk and to think about sex in public – even, in an indirect way, in the Commons. We can express opinions that show either what fine, upstanding people we are, or what liberal, tolerant people we are, accordingly. We also get to hear about our friends', colleagues', family members' and favourite TV commentators' attitudes to sex. Not to mention being given the possibility of having a hand in the downfall of the loveable/hateable fornicator.
As we are all the living results of a sexual act that's as unthinkable as the big bang (and what is the big bang if not a perfect metaphor for mum and dad in bed?) it surely makes sense that we should enjoy seeing, hearing and speaking about powerful people's love lives. You might even say that an intense focus on distant global events can sometimes be a way of running away from our more genuine, intimate interests.