Ladies and gentlemen, a new sex manual has sauntered into town. Punning title, check; cover image of sliced fruit, check; sexologist author with PhD, check. So far, so standard, but Dr Ian Kerner’s She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman is beginning to have an impact beyond the usual scope of a glossy paperback sex manual.

Of all the hoary clichés about women and sex, the one most ripe to be laid to rest is that which states that women favour erotic words over pornographic images, personality over pectorals. If this were true, Anais Nin novels would outsell Sex and the City DVDs and Playgirl magazine would have folded after three issues. A new porn mag by women for women is not the first of its kind — but it may be the first to get it right.