For fuck's sake

Waxwork figures of George Clooney and Brad Pitt at Madame Tussauds had to be recalled for repair after just one day on show because... they were mobbed. Clooney's face was retouched to remove all the lipstick and Brad's arse had suffered from too much pinching.

A spokesman for Madam Tussauds said:

"They have been mobbing the whole set, kissing and touching them for a photo, but this is what it is all about so we are not going to stop them doing this, although we will keep an eye on things."

The Tussauds' management may have had a very different response had customers been molesting a bicycle instead of waxwork figures of Hollywood hunks. A man in Ayr, Scotland, has been put on the sex offenders' register for attempting to fornicate with a bicycle in a hotel room. Two cleaners knocked on his door and, receiving no response, unlocked the door with a master key whereupon they discovered the man naked from the waist down holding the bicycle in front of him and grinding his hips back and forth. The cleaners, who were "extremely shocked", reported the incident to the manager who then called the police.

I remember watching a television interview with Anthony Burgess many years ago. The discussion had got around to his dislike of skinny models. He related an anecdote about how he once hooked up with a supermodel and, even though she was extremely beautiful to look at, he likened making love to her as akin to "sleeping with a bicycle". Maybe this Scottish fellow remembered the same interview and reasoned that enjoying sexual congress with a bicycle would therefore be the closest he'd ever get to sleeping with a supermodel. Or maybe the gentleman was taking Flann O'Brien's theory about men swapping atoms with their bicycles from The Third Policeman to its extreme.

But that is not the point. The point is that this man has been put on the sex offenders' register for having an elaborate wank in a hotel room. Yes, embarrassing for everyone involved but it's not as if he had done it in a crowded shopping centre or cycled onto the pitch during a Premier League football match and violated his vehicle in front of the crowd and millions of television viewers. I could understand the cleaners being upset and the manager asking the man to leave the hotel but calling the police and getting him put on the sex offenders' register? A rapist is a sex offender. A paedophile is a sex offender. Someone who buys video images of child abuse is a sex offender. How can being caught cracking one off in a hotel room be comparable? It's overkill. What next: teenagers caught in their bedroom having one off the wrist by their parents are to get shipped off to a young offenders' detention centre? What an utter waste of judicial resources and a shameful trivialisation of genuine sexual offences.