Having never in my life been 'raring to go' or experiencing any urgency regarding sex, I always found my contemporaries' obession with it mildly ridiculous as a teenager. I also found no difference in levels of eagerness between lads of different ethinicities. Different religions, yes -the Catholic boys I knew were notably more sex-crazed than the others! There was a prevailing belief that if one pursued older girls (university students in particular) that one was more likely to get laid than if one stuck to girls' ones' own age.

But this was in the early to mid-1970s, and atttitudes were different. Consider the popularity of the Bobby Goldsboro song Summer (The First Time), about the romanticised seduction of a 17-year-old boy by a 21-year-old woman, which reached number 9 in the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1973. It raised eyebrows in certain areas due to the 'suggestive' lyrics but nobody thought to ban it. Consider, too, the contrasting tone and theme of Young Girl (Gary Puckett and the Union Gap), which reached number 6 on its' second release the following year. In both, the female is portrayed as the pursuer, but in the Goldsboro lyric, she is seen as, not only blameless, but in a sympathetic light as she makes a 'man' of the youngster. The other song paints a picture of a precocious temptress knowingly and immorally pursuing an older man.

I did hear of older women who went after teenage boys -the term 'cougar' was not used then - but nobody I knew well had ever had such an encounter. My son, who possesses the Mutant ability to charm any female within 100 metres at a glance, tells me that such women can be extremely persistent and very annoying!