Rude Britannia: One Man's Journey Around the Highways and Bi-ways of British Sex

by Tim Fountain

'A wonderfully funny and sociologically piquant work' - Stephen Fry

Tim Fountain knows a lot about sex.
He's slept with over 5,000 people and been labelled a pervert by much of the mainstream press. But is his sex life really that different from the rest of the country?
To find out, Tim travelled up and down Britain stopping off at swingers' hotels and glory holes, visiting doll fetishists and animal fanciers, dogging devotees and spanking enthusiasts. Peeping between net curtains and nosing about behind bike sheds, he learnt that despite what our Victorian forefathers might have wanted to believe, the British are most definitely doing it - in eccentric, inventive and above all thoroughly British ways.

Genres: Travel

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2008

About the author

Tim Fountain is an author, playwright and occasional performer. His books include the number 1 best selling ibook Rude Britannia (Weidenfeld and Nicholson), Quentin Crisp: a biography (Absolute Press) and So you want to be a playwright? (Nick Hern Books). He is currently working on his first novel.

His plays include Queen of the Nile (Hull Truck) Dandy in the Underworld (Soho Theatre) Sex Addict (Royal Court and Schaubuehne, Berlin) Resident Alien (Bush and New York Theatre Workshop, also broadcast on BBC Radio 3), Julie Burchill Is Away, Hotboi and How To Lose Friends and Alienate People (Soho Theatre) featuring such actors as Jack Davenport, Bette Bourne, Jackie Clune, and Con O Neil. He has also written for television and radio and was a principal writer on Bob and Margaret (Channel Four/Comedy Central, USA).

Tim has also written journalism for amongst others the Guardian, Daily Mail, Sunday Times, Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, New Statesman and Attitude magazine.

An regular broadcaster Tim has appeared on Newsnight, Women’s Hour, Saturday Review and Loose Ends on BBC Radio Four and Weekender on BBC Radio 2. He has also presented a documentary about the death of Quentin Crisp for Channel Four and featured in the BBC 2 documentaries Circumcise Me and Am I Normal?

Tim is also a teacher of playwriting and has tutored for numerous organizations including The Central School of Speech and Drama, The Arvon Foundation and MIT in the USA. He was Literary Manager of the Bush Theatre from 1997 - 2001 and a lecturer in creative writing at Strathclyde University from 2006-2009.

Reviews

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Download this book for free off iTunes a little while ago - I was feeling a little homesick and didn't read the blurb. Needless to say, once I actually sat down to read it, I was a little surprised, however I did find the book rather enjoyable. It brought back a lot of memories for me - of Britain and it's people, not of sex in toilets - and I found myself chucking aloud at several of the situations Mr. Fountain observed. Obviously this is not for the faint of heart, but it is well written, thought provoking, and an entertaining way to pass a lunch break.

[Alison Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writing - ok, structure - ok, interest level - unputdownable. Shock, disgust, wide eyed bewilderment, all natural reactions.
The author is extremely candid and the topics researched not for the prudish. I have learned a lot, mainly I have no idea what I have not been doing all these years!
Not necessarily enjoyable, car crash reading perhaps. Horrified fascination.

[Nicholas Van Den Berg · Rating 1.5 out of 5]

I picked up a copy of this two years ago in a little second-hand store in - of all places - Prince Albert, in the Groot Karoo.
I spied the title, was curious, picked it up, leafed through it, decided I had to read it, bought it, brought it home, read it.
And, bluntly, the gushing praise I see heaped on this book is nowhere near my experience of it.

Want a deep dive into the vagaries of the uniquely(!) British sexual psyche? Step right this way, sir. Want a titillating look at how multifaceted human sexuality can be? We've got you covered, sir. And, most important: want some ideas on how to further explore that dark, exciting something-or-other that lives in your soul rent-free?
Oh, we don't disappoint, sir.
And then, you read the book. And there's lots of sex in it. LOTS.
There's something else, too, that makes an even greater impression than the sex. The escalating, uncomfortable sense that the author is actually doing a Tony Soprano: inviting you in for a glass of Johnny Walker Black with a Mickey Finn in it, while eyeballing you for a set of concrete shoes.

Frankly, this book is one of the most rottenly mendacious I've ever experienced that assumed the responsibility for an honest look at sex.
There's cottaging, frotting, bisexual exploration, voyeurism, BDSM, Furry culture. And that's only the start.
And there's plenty of the last thing - absolutely the last thing - you want, need, or expect in a book like this: a heaping dose of utter misery. A layer of guilt and self-flagellation so thick that it's suffocating.
The book's cover whispers: Why not waste a few hours with me on a bit of dirty fun, eh? Then the content grabs you by the throat, and croaks: The world is fucked, I want to die, and I want you to die with me.
A book like this has to be approached with extreme caution. It's not a friendly embrace: it's a sucker punch. Too many people don't have the perspective needed to see it as what it is: a sour-grapes memoir. Too many read things like this, and instead walk away with a message of Sex is horrible, and not worth anyone's time. I know - been there, done that.
Quoth the blurb: 'Tim Fountain knows more about sex than most people.'
Well, he certainly knows more about his own sexual prejudices than most people.

Being what it is - an individual author's account of his sex life, nearly two decades past - this book has to stand on its own merits. In a book in which the sex is so varied and voluminous, the least you'd expect is a pervasive sense of excitement and - dare we hope? - sex-positivity.
Writing this salaciously frenzied should have at least put me in mind of the works of Michael Perkins. Instead, Tim Fountain becomes a stark reminder of Ambrose Bierce's definition of a critic: Someone who boasts himself hard to please because no one tries to please him.
As well as putting me in mind of Bierce, this tome put me in mind of Erica Jong, too: a misguided sense that you should be able to use sex as currency to buy every kind of inner peace and happiness.
But that's not what sex - particularly recreational sex - is about. Recreational sex is recreational sex. Pure, healthy recreational sex is freely given and freely accepted. It doesn't substitute for, or lead to, love or worth or self-esteem - it isn't meant to. It was never designed to carry those loads. If you have recreational sex, you have it because you want fun, you want play, you want an opportunity to explore. If you're at all healthy (and admittedly, a great many people are not), you eat sex like it's the richest, most decadent chocolate cake you'll ever have the good fortune to savour.
Tim Fountain seems to swallow sex as if it were a particularly painful treatment prescribed by an oncologist. And he makes certain that everyone who reads the book suffers through the experience of his self-imposed martyrdom.
Maybe there is a certain volume of pain and desperation in most of the sectors in which people search for sex and love and bonding. But tarring the entirety of your own sexual experience with that dirty brush - and expecting your readership to simply go along with it - is unhealthy.
Maybe Tim Fountain has evolved and healed since this tome's first publication in 2008. For his sake, and the sake of everyone around him, I hope so, and wish him all the best. But at the time he wrote this book, he didn't need a publisher. He needed a psychiatrist.

If you're under the impression that this book is an uplifting invitation into a brave new world, my advice is: don't bother.
It's the exact opposite.
To everyone who's read it, and now has the uncomfortable feeling of having been rigorously penetrated three different ways by the spectre of unipolar depression, here's my counter: It doesn't have to be that way. Go forth, and make of sex what you will.

Two-and-a-half impersonal, and rather grudging, stars out of five for the insightfulness of the content.
No stars out of five for the author taking us by the scruff of our collective neck and holding us under the oily surface of his guilt.

[Own Timis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was gifted this book about 15 years ago by a friend who knows the author and this is probably my 6th or 7th read through of it, but my first since perhaps 2016. Still find it an excellent read, although it does now feel rather dated - but it's a fascinating snapshot of sexual Britain in the late 00s.

[Drew Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Fountain set out here to explore Britain’s sexual highways and byways, to explore the fetish clubs, swingers’ clubs, dogging sites and much, much more. He didn’t want to just observe but to explore and experience the sexual underbelly of Britain, the side of Britain that isn’t celebrated in the guide books, well most of them. The result is this book, but it’s more than just a chronical through one man’s sexual adventure.

What lifts this book is Fountain’s style and perspective. He doesn’t make fun of or caricature the people he is writing about, he tries to get to know them instead, even when those people are caricaturing themselves. His descriptions aren’t salacious or voyeuristic, this isn’t soft porn masquerading as serious writing. Fountain’s writing does have a strong feel of place, and many of these places are sadly seedy. So many of these clubs are housed in rundown places, as if the venue reflects the embarrassment the participants feel. Fountain’s feeling for place is at its best with his description of a heterosexual brothel, housed on a rundown Manchester industrial estate.

Fountain wrote this book after writing and performing his one-man play Sex Addict. He had come out about having sex with over 5,000 people and been labelled a pervert by the mainstream media for that. This book was written after that and seems to be his way of exploring what is labelled “abnormal” by the same mainstream media. But this book is as much about Fountain as those he’s writing about and this adds to the satisfaction of this read. Throughout the book he is emailing and flirting with a man called Richard, who lives in Glasgow. They met after Richard saw a production of Fountain’s play. This anchors the book in Fountain’s own story.

This book was written in 2008, before dating apps, but Fountain charts how much dating and hooking-up had already moved online. So much of this book wouldn’t have been possible without the internet, Fountain wouldn’t have found a fraction of these different groups without it, he made so many contacts via the internet and forums on his laptop.

Fountain’s prose and insights lift this book into the fascinating read that it is. This isn’t a smut book, as its title and cover might suggest, but a fascinating journey through a side of British society that we don’t talk about, much. Unfortunately, and not by Fountain’s choice, many of his trips through this world are on the seedy side, though he never openly laughs at them.

[Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this four stars, because as much as this book made me laugh, it's missing a lot of the varied fetishes out there in the British Isles, so there's a lot missing in my opinion. I also really could have done without chapter eight, being that I don't think it should have had any place in the book. I'm all for opening people's eyes to the fetish world and sexuality choices, but I'm not into highlighting things involving bestiality, aside from to report it to the authorities.

So yes, good read, but I think it could do with a rehaul.

[Fi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A witty insight into the sexual exploits and secrets of the British. Enjoyable memoir of his own and other experiences. Well written without bias or prejudice toward any of the "characters" a interesting insight into what goes on behind closed (and some not so closed) doors

[Nick Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. Very naughty, smutty, snorty. And (at the time of writing) free on Kindle too. Recommended.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't know what to expect and wasn't really surprised by anything I read other than the sentimentality throughout the book. Did enjoy the story about the Abcat cinema.

[Sophie Clissold-Lesser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and at times amusing but no great insight gained.

[Jude · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't remember when I downloaded this book, but it looked like it would be entertaining reading. I don't know what I expected to find, but overall I came away from it feeling that Tim Fountain had found an overall very lacklustre British sexual culture. His tour around swingers clubs and massage parlours just seemed to leave me with a run-down rather seedy feeling. Was I expecting something more glamorous, something more steamy with a Hollywood treatment, maybe.
As for the zoophilia, the idea that people he interviewed thought that the animals consent, is frankly laughable and smacks of special pleading. For the other fetishes and games he investigated, I was interested to read about them, but I was reminded in more than one place of some of the comedy sexual situations to be found in a Tom Sharpe novel.
I enjoyed reading the book, for all that some of the chapters seemed bizarre seen from my more orthodox world, he has written it well and with sympathy to most of the characters he met. I would say this is probably not the book to read if you are the least bit prudish, but I thought it was worth the time out to read.