What a total star Anna Richardson is. I don’t know any other presenter, with the possible exception of Dawn Porter, who would admit within seconds of the start of the show that she’s recently grown a “bum beard.” Not that I especially wanted to know that, you know, but even so. Brave lady.

Opening the show with a set of rapid-fire statistics on the nation’s sexual health, the only one of which I can remember is that 20 teenage girls get pregnant every DAY, she introduced the studio audience and then took to the streets with a union-flag-clad bed and tried to persuade London’s pedestrians to hop into it with her and talk about sex. Most of them were, shall we say, more than a bit reticent. And that, dear reader, is exactly the problem.

Because as everyone knows, if you’re not having sex, then you should be talking about it. All the time. And if you don’t believe that, this wasn’t the show for you.

Well, almost. Actually there’s a serious point here. As a nation, we obsess about sex a lot. It’s all over the media, the Internet, the telly, the magazines, it comes at us (ooo-er missus) from every direction. Are we doing it often enough? Are we any good at it? Do our feet smell? Are our willies big enough? Why are our tits that funny shape? And on, and on, and on. How are we ever to know what’s normal if we’re bombarded with images of “the perfect body” and try to measure ourselves against that ideal?

Anna picked a rather strange place to start. Pubic hair. But you have to start somewhere, right? And even pubic hair can be a fashion statement. In the 50s, when bikinis were invented, having dangly bits was not an option, and waxing was invented (I’m painting with a broad brush here – hahaha – so forgive any historical inaccuracies). Then in the hippy times we all went back to nature, grew our pubes as long as we could and let it all hang out. Then things swung back the other way again with micro-bikinis and thongs and whatnot, and the Brazilian was invented. The landing strip, if you will. And finally we all started watching porn, and you can’t see the good bits if they’re all swept under the rug so The Hollywood was invented.

So off Anna went to “tend the lawn.” A wonderful phrase that had me laughing for fully five minutes. She’d never had one before, and didn’t realise how painful it was going to be. But hey, it’s worth it, right? Especially when you feel the wind. Anna wondered what it looked like. “At the moment it’s a bit pink,” said her professional waxing lady. What do you call them? Downstairs Gardeners, I suppose. Or under-coiffeurs.

Back to the studio audience. Do they wax? Or trim? Yes, the majority do. Only the ladies don’t like a FULL waxing on a gent. It gives him “that last chicken in the supermarket look,” as one lady put it. As long as it’s still got a bone in it, you shouldn’t be complaining missus. So anyway, that was lesson number 1: we should all be keeping ourselves trim. Down There.

Then it was off to examine the thorny subject of Internet porn, and its ready accessibility by young people. Actually I imagine there WOULD be some porn that involved thorns, if you looked hard enough. The rather less wholesome version Anna’s teenage lads admitted to having seen involved two women taking a dump on each other. Coprophilia has never been to my taste (you’ll be pleased to know) and once their parents were given a gleg at what their sons had been watching, they weren’t too chuffed either. I thought one mother was going to throw up. They did that too, on the video, apparently. Now that really is sick.

So lesson number 2: install content filters on your kids PCs, or at the very least move the PC into the living room so you can all enjoy the porn together keep an eye on what they’re doing.

Next we had That Condom Moment, featuring the lads of the Long Ashton football team. I think this was just an excuse for Anna to order a bunch of fit guys to drop their shorts so she could cop an eyeful. Or several eyefuls. But you wouldn’t begrudge her a bit of fun after she’d been to all the trouble of first admitting to a bum beard and then having it ripped out. The serious side to this was that just as willies come in various sizes, so do condoms. And if you use the wrong size it’ll split. Or fall off. At which point your Condom Moment turns into your Embarrassing Condom Moment. To avoid that, you need to measure. But it’s not length that counts in this case, it’s girth. Something the ladies have known for a long time. Or should that be a wide time.

Anyway the statistics are: If you’re over 13cms at your widest point, you need a gunga condom. 12-13cms and you’re Mr. Average and can get away with “Medium.” Under 12cms and you need to choose the “snug” fitting ones, or any of the other euphemisms the condom marketeers have chosen to mean Small.

Which led us nicely into an examination of penises with those guinea pig teenage lads again. I must say they stood up majestically to all this embarrassment. Paraded in front of four pictures of flaccid equipage, at 3″, 4″, 5″ and 6″, the lads were asked to decide which was the UK average. They all plumped for 4- or 5-inches. Haha! Wrong! The UK average size for a relaxed penis is 3 inches. “How do you feel about that?” asked Anna. “RELIEVED!” admitted one lad. Brilliant. Good for you mate. I suspect most of the blokes watching were with you on that one (or it wouldn’t be the average, right?).

They had a go at boobies too. Big ones, small ones, saggy ones, and plastic homogenised Hollywood ones. Which are the nicest, was the question? They all chose the surgically-enhanced pair. Why? Because that’s what they’d seen most of. I’m guessing none of these lads had ever seen a pair of tits…umm…in the flesh. Their experience was all from porn.

Lesson #3: We’re all different and it’s OK. And to ram the message home, we had a detailed examination of the Male Tackle, its idiosyncracies and quirks, and why we’re all perfectly normal, even though we all worry about not being.

Last but not least: tantric sex. You can keep going for hours, apparently. Presumably it’s OK to hit the pause button too and break for a cup of tea, this being England, although this wasn’t specifically mentioned.

All in all this was a fantastically entertaining and candid start to what will be a six-part series. Anna Richardson is the perfect host. Open and honest without being crude or salacious, but still retaining a sense of humour and fun. Anyone who was offended by this really needs to examine their own attitudes and the dangers inherent in them. Ignorance is not bliss. We all need not only the facts, but also the understanding and acceptance that the programme promoted. It’s a definite bookmark in the week’s telly for me from now on, and I’ll be covering the rest of the series here too.

The Channel 4 “Sexperience” website got a lot of plugs during the programme, so here’s a handy-dandy link for all those of you too lazy (or exhausted from all that sex) to type it in.