Total Agony!

[Backdated.]

My first experience of seeing sex on TV was on L!VE TV's Agony!, which was a version of an "agony aunt"-type show which had laughably bad actors playing laughably bad people in laughingly bad situations. These "agony" situations were clearly entirely fabricated to give enjoyment to the viewer who clearly either had no life (which explains why they were watching L!VE TV during the daytime) or was about 11 years old. Luckily, I was the latter. To make it even worse, L!VE added thought balloons to the acted sections, which usually involved the same lame jokes over and over again, and then some self-proclaimed "experts" (including one named "Miff", who was straight out of "irresponsible lad" subculture) talked for a while about how stupid everyone in the world was.

Great TV, eh?

The problems, lies as they were, all involved sex in some way. Evidently, as a pre-watershed programme, even L!VE couldn't show Agony! before 9:00pm (and, in actual fact, L!VE's late-night TV scheduling started at 10), but since they were tabloid TV at its very worst, "sex" appeared, insofar as they had male-actor-in-bed-with-female-actor, who was wearing nothing but a bra (well, she probably was but we never saw anything below the midriff). This, allegedly, was sex - or, at least, the moments immediately preceding or following it.

Because real women wear a bra in bed, sensibly cover up their lower half, and in the moments following orgasm enter into a deep and frank conversation with their men about whatever problem that's haunting them at the time, accompanied by huge thought balloons which appear out of nowhere and make sexist jokes. Evidently.

Still, this was the first time I saw any semblance of sex on TV, and there followed a few weeks of religiously watching the ridiculous channel so I could catch the few seconds of sexual non-activity, followed by a few years of watching L!VE TV after hours, which consisted of more awful home-produced shows, with occasional runs of Compromising Situations and then good-quality softcore erotica at 10:30.

Well, I say good quality. It didn't have any thought bubbles, and that was a step upwards.