Housework turns men on? Please don't talk dirty

Next year just can't come soon enough for me. That's when we can all start using Abi Titmuss's exciting new 2005 calendar. John Leslie's ex-girlfriend, now a presenter on the Playboy TV channel, has done the obligatory 'sexy calendar' shoot already and the leaked photos look hilarious.

My favourite features Abi on all fours, wearing a bra but no knickers, pouting at the camera and clutching a miniature hand-held vacuum cleaner. I have been staring at it fascinated all week. Is the implication that this object is some kind of sex toy? I wouldn't advise it.

Perhaps the photographer did not see 101 Most Embarrassing Sexual Accidents last month on Channel 4. Anybody who did would not have forgotten the man who told ambulance staff that his penis had been 'bitten off by a prostitute', a story which seemed relatively plausible until they spotted a bloody vacuum cleaner in the wardrobe.

(How touching that even as the poor fellow's organ was severed - surely a moment of clear priorities for any man - his only thought was: 'How can I hide the fact that I tried to get a blowjob off the Hoover?' With what grim determination, he must have picked up the offending machine and carried it to the wardrobe. There's nothing like dignity.)

So no, this calendar probably isn't trying to recommend doing saucy things with vacuum cleaners. Presumably, the idea is that Abi is such a sex kitten that she takes her pants off even to do the housework. She is already known as a bit of a goer; she was offered the Playboy job after being 'exposed' in the tabloids for three-in-a-bed orgies. God bless her; I would never dare have sex with two men at once. We know the risk: they might stop in the middle and start talking about snooker.

Besides, one bloke is exhausting enough - just imagine clearing up after two of them on a Monday morning. No wonder Abi's so reliant on that vacuum cleaner. Maybe another photo shows her topless in a G-string, carrying a binliner of old beer cans to the dump. But her arse-out vacuuming shot comes hot on the heels of similar sexy shoots by famous babes. (By the way, I think I am prouder of that sentence than anything I have ever written.) Zoe Ball posed with a feather duster. Victoria Beckham wore a baby-doll nightie at the ironing board in a video. Kylie Minogue said: 'I love to get my Marigolds out and have a good clean.'

Is this really a turn-on? Liz Hoggard once refuted the idea in this very newspaper, pointing out: 'Housework means mopping up someone else's mess, someone else's bodily fluids.' That seems a bit extreme - I've never had a boyfriend who actually dribbled and pissed on the floor. I guess I've been lucky.

But I quite agree with Liz that there's nothing inherently sexy about domestic chores. When boys fantasise about French maids, they are presumably imagining the bit where these horny chicks stop doing the housework. If the French maid fantasy has always been about cleaning the oven, then I've been misunderstanding men for years.

What about the reverse? A hot new DVD called Modern Loving for Couples , which hits the shops this week, claims: 'Housework is the new foreplay.' The voiceover explains, above an interesting image of a nude Spaniard washing up while a Japanese woman advances behind him with a strap-on dildo: 'Men who help with household chores get more sex than men who don't.'

Nice try. I think it probably works the other way round - men who get more sex are quicker to help with the household chores. That chirpy post-coital state is a good time to ask a chap to put the bins out. (Just beforehand would be even better, but a man looks silly carrying bin bags with an erection. As I recently pointed out in a stern letter to the council.)

Nevertheless, I am prepared to believe that this particular DVD sex scene is ironic. An image of a man washing up while a woman wields a strap-on (is she insane? For God's sake, don't distract him!) is semiotically different from a woman posing alone in sexy housewife garb. I just can't buy irony in the latter. Is this what they mean by 'post-feminism'? It must be so confusing for men. We stopped wanting to do the housework, but now we're doing it again as a sex game?

Why should men care if it's ironic and empowered or not? 'Whatever rings your bell,' they probably think. 'Either way, we get a clean bathroom.'

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