told me how it worked while we waited for enough boys to turn up to make teams for a game. I didn't believe them, I thought they were spinning a yarn. Turned out they were telling the truth. Then again, they had big sisters, so maybe I should have been less of a sceptic.

when I was about 9 and for years I thought that you needed at least 6 people to make babies.

"Is now the time to take off my pants?"

I was given the book "Where Did I Come From?" and left to it.

So then I knew exactly where I had come from. A day later, so did all my classmates. My mother was pretty unpopular after that.

the girls being told about periods at 13, and them all laughing as it was 2-3 years too late for most of them.

the teachers were all jolly decent chaps, men of action or learning or both and able to discern a gerund at a thousand paces but confronted with that tricky fellow sex they fell to pieces " - um,er, well it's like this, gosh where to begin...now, imagine a train approaching tunnel, no wait..."

My nephew, when very young, said to his mum that he understood about the penis going into the vagina, but then asked if you had to go into hospital to have it done!

Even at about age 12 I mistakenly thought a tampon was something put under a bra strap to stop it falling down!!
About a year ago my daughter and one of her school friends were talking in the back of my car about a sex education lesson they had and how they were told to have a small compact mirror to check they were inserting them correctly. Lovely.

....I went steady with a woodpecker 'til I was 18" (Bob Hope)

a boy in my class, the self-appointed 'rebel' of the class (called Colin) said "let's get a couple of the girls and start a shagging club." We thought this was a great idea, convened in an old abandoned garage, and stood around drinking coke and eating crisps. I thought "So this is shagging! I like it!" Obviously Colin didn't know what it meant either.
A year later my big brother explained the technicalities of it to me but I didn't believe him, as he was always telling me crap for his own amusement.

I mean what Western parent calls their daughter Mulan - her surname's not Zappa is it?

Anyway, we all know it's The Man who's responsible for everything.

I can't claim to have very much of anything from what you call Official Sources. I never got that Birds And Bees conversation from my folks, ever.

As for school, it was supposed to be covered in a parallel track with the Science covering Reproduction and the R.E. teaching supposedly working through the moral side. (We are talking the late 70s here.) However the science teacher was a chemistry teacher really, and was squeamish, so after stuff about worms we didn't even get the joys of cutting up rats let alone covering the human business. And because of that the R.E. teacher skipped it too. Much later we got the predictable bleating on, pretty unconvincingly I thought even then, about the evils of contraception (guess what kind of school) and grudging praise of the rhythm method, but by that stage if seemed they had sold the pass. Hopeless, really.

Anyway, long since, my pals had sat me down, on a fence I seem to recall, and told me what went where and why. Then they told me what a pack of evil girls had done with a nutcracker, allegedly, but let's not go there.

My 9 year-old boy caught me off guard as I was loading the dishwasher the other night. He was curious about the man's role in all of this having a baby stuff and I just told him what happens (without using me or his mother as an example, so that he didn't vomit on the spot).

He was a little taken aback, but I said it's not at all scary or weird when you're older. Well...it depends...but I'll let him find all that out himself.

My policy with my daughters is total transparency and freedom. Once they get to 40 they can do what they like, with who they like. I'm an old hippy at heart.

German, because he was working on the bases over there, and a dictionary.

When the Talk came around I apparently asked Why blowjobs?

I lost my virginity before I started masturbating. The animated films they showed us at school were all very well - the penis entering the vagina and then your little guys all coming out and that - but they didn't explain the vigourous friction needed to achieve that goal. I thought you just stuck it in then waited around for a while. It's a good thing the girl involved was a bit experienced, I've got to say.

I picked the Ladybird "Your Body" book off the rack at the Post Office and looked through it. And, reading the appropriate page, asked my mum, in a very loud voice, what a penis was. But pronounced it "Pennies". In front of a large queue of people.

Following the buying of the book, the Old Man explained things to me.

I was left convinced that a man had to wee inside a woman's Front Bottom so the tadpoles could get to the orange and then a baby would grow.

Gradually, everything sort of fell into place. A mixture of schoolyard hearsay, fragments of bongo periodicals, funny balloons left round the back of the cricket pavilion and coming downstairs to ask my mum, in front of the rest of the Bible study group, why my willy had gone like a stick.

Guardian Masterclass - What Will You Master?

Sex Education for Beginners

Dates: Thursday 28th April

Location: Round John Porter’s house.

Timings: 12:00-15:00

Price: Either a tube of Pringles, a bag of Doritos, or a 2 litre bottle of coke (inclusive of VAT)

Maximum number of places: There’s enough chairs for 12 people.

This fascinating course is taught by Year 7’s foremost expects on sex: Robin Patterson has loads of porno mags that he got from his cousin. Justin Kirk has played a Strip Poker game on his stepdad’s laptop and claims to have seen a photo of Jordan’s tits.

The course will cover which girls in our year are up for it. We'll also look at which girls to avoid either because they are minging or tight.

Jamie Root from Year 9 will show you how to create a balanced tale of sexual conquest to impress your friends, about how you did it with a girl you met at Pontins, while maintaining plausibility.

We'll spend quite a bit of time thinking about how fit Mrs Mason is. Later on we’ll break-off into small work groups to discuss which popstars we’d like to do it with.

The course will be structured to be of interest to sexual novices and to those who have already done it with loads of birds but wish to brush up on the key points.