So he turned to the services of a Dutch school for the sexually challenged, where silver-haired ladies with maternal bosoms would kick-start his ego, and his libido, and provide him with some much needed experience (with the added optional extra of popping his cherry at then end of the course).

Olly snorted, grimaced and winced his way through the programme in a manner very similar to a teenage boy watching a late night Channel Five film with his parents. I kept shouting at him to 'stop being so juvenile, it's just sex, that's the problem with this country, we're all too embarrassed to talk about anything, it's a form of cognitive therapy, rah rah rah!'

But even I was tempted to duck behind the sofa when James sat peering between the legs of his intimacy coach like a mystified child with its first jigsaw puzzle.

There was nothing in the course that a nice girlfriend with a lot of patience couldn't teach the man. But with his confidence levels at below freezing, James was never going to find himself a nice girlfriend, and would probably have ended up in the Guiness Book of Records as the world's oldest paper boy. There was a strange irony in that. Would he have been better off with just working with an intimacy coach on his self-esteem, and going on to sleep with somebody he actually found attractive? But would he have ever been able to reach that stage with a woman if he hadn't already lost his virginity to a professional?

Everybody has insecurities, but for the few people that become so emotionally crippled by their fear that it takes control of them, this sort of specialist help did seem appropriate. But, although it goes against my liberal sensibilities to say so, it was just, well, weird. And filming the event? This was a man who was so paranoid about his body that he hadn't even sat next to a woman in years. But he whipped out his manhood for the viewing pleasure of the nation, knowing there'd be a fair chance that his nan would soon be choking on her Horlicks at the sight of her grandson as nature intended.