Is It In Yet? The Big Book of Sexual Failures. Mark Leigh

camera, allowing him to view images on his TV of her on the toilet. The victim told the court, ‘I knew something was up, as I usually use peach toilet paper.’

      A man from Ohio had a very peculiar way of arousing himself; he’d play with himself until he achieved an erection and, at the moment of climax, would shoot himself with a gun. He wasn’t entirely crazy though… he did wear a bulletproof vest.

      Police in Ohio were called to a house when a man discovered his father lying face down on the couch, naked and not breathing. Medics on the scene pronounced the man dead but, when his body was removed, they discovered two unusual sights: burn marks around his genitals and a hole in one of the cushions in the position of his groin. On removing the cushion, they found two electric sanders fixed to the couch frame.

      It turned out that the man had had a habit of putting his penis down the hole and enjoying the good vibrations of the sanders (with the sanding paper removed, of course). His death was caused by his orgasm shorting out one of the sanders, resulting in his electrocution.

      In July 2009 Aberdeen police found Amy Henderson vigorously masturbating near a number of burning dustbins outside a McDonalds in the city’s main shopping centre. Further investigations found petrol, rags and a lighter in her handbag. She later admitted starting the blazes because she suffered from pyrophilia – a sexual disorder that meant she was turned on by fire.

      In a similar case, in 1997, two San Diego residents were charged with setting fire to various motor vehicles. They told the court that they did it for their twenty-seven-year-old friend Tammy Jo Garcia, who was aroused by the sight of burning cars.

      Emperor Tiberius used to skinny dip in a pool filled with young boys, who would nibble on his penis as he swam.

      In 2007 Canadian police were keen to track down an unknown masochist, who approached women and pestered them to kick him in the groin. While not a crime in itself, the police were worried that women might be in danger from his ulterior motives.

      Women in northern Siberia are reported to show their interest in men by throwing slugs at them.

      In 1994 thirty-three-year-old French art lover Michel Renet staged a twelve-day hunger strike to protest against a judge’s refusal to permit him to legally marry the Venus de Milo statue.

      Kevin Kirkland, a forty-four-year-old computer engineer from Shropshire, was found naked apart from his socks and boots, handcuffed to a tree in August 2010, with a cord also wrapped around his penis. The inquest into his death heard he had died from a combination of hypothermia and blood loss from cuts on his wrists, which were caused by his desperate attempts to escape, presumably after changing his mind.

      Summing up on one of her cases, judge Anne Tyler commented that the man who appeared in her Ohio courtroom had ‘what can only be described as a urine fetish.’ He was arrested for collecting urine from male restrooms with the intention of drinking it.

      In January 2012 thirty-four-year-old Christopher Bjerkness of Duluth, Minnesota was sentenced to four years of supervised probation for breaking into school gyms, sports complexes and rehabilitation centres and slashing rubber exercise balls with a knife to fulfil a sexual urge. Bjerkness admitted that he can’t explain his fetish but said he isn’t a threat to people; only balls.

      A fifty-one-year-old British man who practised auto asphyxiation was discovered dead, hanging from a tree. Police who searched his house found the following items: handcuffs, leg irons, a penis vice, scrotum weights, various electric-shock devices, a mace with chain and spiked ball, canes, whips and 107 pairs of leather gloves, of which twenty-nine were determined to have semen stains inside.

      Author James Joyce admitted to being turned on by his lover’s unwashed underwear.

      Over a long period of time, twenty-five-year-old Frank Ranieri from Staten Island, New York impersonated a police officer to win the trust of teenagers. He’d pay them $500 a time to let him stab them in the buttocks with a pin or a biro. One girl earned almost $6,000 in total and told the (real) police that she went along with it as she needed the money. Another recruited two of her friends, telling them, ‘If you want to make some cash, he’ll pay you a lot. It’s not so bad.’ Ranieri was arrested in June 2007 and charged with second-degree assault as part of a sexually motivated crime.

      History doesn’t record who suddenly thought, ‘I want to increase my sexual performance, so I’ll eat ambergris,’ (a waxy substance found in the intestines of sperm whales) but the concept of the aphrodisiac exists in almost every culture.

      It’s easy to understand the origin of some aphrodisiacs. Foods that mimic certain body parts were supposed to aid those same body parts, which is why powdered rhino horn or the sea cucumber are notable aphrodisiacs in Asia.

      Other aphrodisiacs are actually toxins that can enhance arousal. These include Spanish fly – an acidic beetle secretion that can cause a severe fever – and also fugu – or blowfish – which can lead to pleasurable tingling if it’s prepared properly… or a painful death if it’s not.

      The following items, as bizarre as they sound, are all reported to enhance sexual performance.

       Cobra blood

       Powdered frogs’ bones

       Tiger penis

       The milk of an ass combined with the blood of a bat

       Powdered cow dung dissolved in water

       Sheep’s eyelids soaked in hot tea

       Pigeon excrement

       Live monkey brains

       Lizards soaked in urine

       Bull penis-and-testicle soup

       Menstrual blood

       Dolphin testicles

       Duck eggs containing a partially developed foetus

       Skink (lizard) flesh

       Wolf meat

       Rhino horn

       Leaf-cutter ants

       Dolphin testicles

       Bamboo urine

       Sea Cucumber

       Caterpillar fungus (a parasite than infects the brains of caterpillar larvae

       Toad excrement

       Pigeon dung

       Melted fat from a camel hump

       Ambergris (intestinal secretions of the sperm whale)

       Blood from a dog