Isn't Movie Sex embarrassing? I've lost count of the number of times I've rushed out of the living room to make a cup of tea as a couple writhe and twist on the small screen.

Call me a prude, but I'd never dream of canoodling like that in my own life. And I resent the way raunchy scenes between people like Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone put ideas into my husband's innocent head.

Now Movie Sex is at the centre of a legal wrangle as Hollywood's golden couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are suing an American magazine over claims that another couple were paid £1,250 a day to give them sex lessons on the set of their latest film. The actors deny this.

Truancy would have been well and truly eliminated if sex lessons had been on the curriculum at our school. I'm intrigued. What, exactly, can people teach us about how to have sex?

We know that windsurfers do it standing up and jockeys do it in the saddle. One thing is for sure, I'll bet the majority of people don't do it like they do in the movies.

For a start, Movie Sex usually involves an extremely good-looking couple. They start the ball rolling with dinner in an expensive restaurant. They go back to his or her place and tear each others' clothes off as soon as they get through the door.

As their expensive, slinky underwear is exposed, they admire each others' beautifully-honed, sun-bronzed bodies. Cinema audiences are treated to an inch-by-inch exploration of this gorgeous firm flesh as it is revealed in all its glory.

Yet, in the real world, most people are attractive only to their partner and the only time they tear each others' clothes is during an argument. I'd be furious if I'd forked out on a new off-the-shoulder frock to impress a bloke only to have him reduce it to dusters. And let's face it, there are few of us who could be described as desirable in our underwear.

Then comes the crunch. Film couples take hours making love, stroking and devouring each others' bodies, confessing undying love until the point of no return.

"Normal" couples don't do it like that. For most women, conscious of ruts and ripples even the most expensive creams won't improve, the last thing we want is a bloke slobbering the length of our bodies.

So we insist on having the light off, then mentally run through tomorrow's shopping list.

In the heat of the moment, mush-ridden film couples utter expressions like "I want you, I love you, I need you" while the rest of us are yelling: "Move over, you're lying on my leg, and be careful, move your knee, don't wake the cat."

In my book (How to Have Sex While Baking A Cake, at present unpublished) the physical act is anything but sensual, and it's not in the least passionate. Yet if you don't have sex like Stone and Douglas in Basic Instinct, you're seen as odd.

In life, every couple is different, and every couple does it differently - there's no set formula.

As for Movie Sex - the best kind is that practised by Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. She pretended to do it in a crowded restaurant - and made a very good job of it.

What a great teacher she'd make.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.