IT is a risky business, loading the dishwasher. This is partly because I am forever banging my calf on the corner of the open door, resulting in some spectacular bruises.

Mostly, however, it's because my other half seems to regard the loading of domestic appliances - tumble drier, washing machine, freezer, he ain't fussy - as a provocative act.

True, we have a narrow kitchen. But I still don't think that's any excuse for all the squeezing past just as I'm bending over. There's definitely no room to do a Jessica Lange (see The Postman Always Rings Twice for details) and, even if there was, eyeballing the crumbs on the work surfaces simply doesn't do it for me. I'm happy for him to get Mr Muscle out, but only if it's in conjunction with a dish cloth.

Women are good at multi-tasking, but there are limits, and at the end of a long hard day, we've often reached them. According to a survey on ITV1's This Morning, 34 per cent of men would like their partners to have a higher sex drive, complaining that their women were often "too tired" to make love. As the programme's "Sexpert" Donna Dawson pointed out, there's a clue in that, chaps.

Candles and soft music are all very well, but if you want reciprocation in the bedroom there's nothing like doing the washing up or making the dinner to encourage us to show our appreciation. Men may be from Mars but women are from Lakeland. Have you seen all those wonderful kitchen gadgets they stock?

I have been transfixed by the Sex Week strand on This Morning, in which brave couple Caroline and Gary have been following Donna's advice and filming their progress in a series of rather flushed video diaries, reporting back to Fern and Phil the following morning. I feel I should slap a "parental advisory" warning on the column at this point. If you're easily offended, don't read on. It does get a bit, well, technical.

The segments themselves were preceded by a solemn warning from Fern that they would be "talking explicitly". I braced myself with a black coffee, though when the male and female models came in and took up position on the studio shagpile ("Are you two a couple? No? Ooh!"), their tantric configurations and chaste white underwear made the whole thing rather less raunchy than a Geri Halliwell yoga video.

I was slightly perturbed when daring Donna produced a dildo made of blown glass (wouldn't you know) and told us she was going to demonstrate the best techniques for oral sex. Since 32 per cent of men would apparently like more (tellingly, only five per cent of women thought the same way), this was clearly a case for taking notes.

"I'd like to stress this is not anatomically correct," Donna said, caressing the elongated and unforgiving-looking sex toy (£125 from Coco de Mer; I looked it up for you). Fortunately, she let her fingers do the walking; had she put it anywhere near her lips I would have had to hide behind a cushion, something I normally do only when I'm watching operations on ER or George Galloway being a pussy cat.

"Ladies, it's not like sucking an ice-cream. It's more like lapping milk," Donna continued (oh lordy, we're back to George again). She then explained that there was a kind of magic button on the underside of the penis called the frenulum which, if stimulated correctly, would "send him to heaven". So now you know. Happy hunting.

Caroline and Gary, who, unlike the tanned and toned models were reassuringly rotund regular people, were sent back to their hotel with homework - some role-playing costumes and the fellatio instructions - and I'm sorry to say I missed their report the next day. However, I'd put money on Gary wearing a big grin, if nothing else.

I wasn't intending to morph into Sex And The City's Carrie Bradshaw again until next race day, but I got to thinking: if sex were portrayed more like this, in an unsmutty, helpful, good-humoured way within a supportive, loving relationship - as opposed to the glamorised affairs and semi-pornographic clichs we so often witness on TV - might we have better relationships? Or am I sounding more like Mary Whitehouse?

As a nation, we're impossibly hung up about sex, while at the same time being obsessed with it. Valentine's Day is on Tuesday, in case the shelves groaning with champagne and chocolates have somehow passed you by, and a Purple Ronnie card and a night of nookie is virtually compulsory.

There's no need to go overboard. Some nice nosh and a bottle of bubbly to set the scene perhaps, but if furry love cuffs aren't your thing - and in my experience, they only lead to awkward questions from children who are fully aware that your bedside drawer is Out Of Bounds - then remember this.

The men surveyed said they wanted affection as much as the women did. So, in the words of Otis Redding, try a little tenderness. And if you can do it in the modified missionary position while being creative with a Bounty, then so much the better.

Updated: 16:38 Friday, February 10, 2006