Ur doin it wrong

• John Updike is the latest winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction award.

The first Updike I ever read was Brazil, back in '94. I don't remember the novel very well -- just that there was a sex scene in the first 20 pages which included a comparison between an erection and a banana.

So what took the Literary Review editors so long?

The judges, editors of Literary Review magazine, said Updike had been shortlisted for the prize four times in its 16-year history. "Good sex or bad sex, he has kept us entertained for many years," they said in a statement.

The magazine said it was attempting to contact Updike to tell him the good news.

The 76-year-old American novelist was a finalist for this year's Bad Sex prize for his description of an explosive oral encounter in his latest book, "The Widows of Eastwick," but lost out to British writer Rachel Johnson.

Johnson won for a passage in her satirical novel "Shire Hell" that describes a woman in the midst of a "mounting, Wagnerian crescendo" wondering whether "the Spodders are, as requested, attending the meeting about slug clearance." Cats and moths also make metaphorical appearances.