Irvine Welsh and Will Self shortlisted for Bad Sex Awards

Although the literary world ought to have its mind on higher things, nothing causes such excited titillation as the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex Awards, to be presented for the fourteenth time at the appropriately named but otherwise highly respectable In and Out Club in St James's Square.

The late Auberon Waugh, son of Evelyn no less, spotted this lewd tendency when, as editor of the Literary Review, he gave the prize in 1993 to Melvyn Bragg, now leading Tony Crony Lord Bragg.

It clearly did him no harm.

This year's short list will be introduced by Auberon's son Alexander with steamy breathless readings by poet Sarah Jane Lovett and actress Sarah Crowden.

"Bron's idea was to rid literature of toe-curling unnecessary depictions of the sexual act but the award seems to have a life of its own," says Lovett.

"They are particularly filthy this year and should be a good introduction to the Christmas party season."

The contenders are Will Self, Irvine Welsh, Mark Haddon, Julia Glass, David Mitchell, Tim Willcox, Iain Hollingshead, Michael Cannon, Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal, Thomas Pynchon, Hugo Rifkind and Conrad Williams.

"Yet in the friction of their final lunge there was an anticipation of more than arrival," Will Self writes in The Book of Dave.

"Their jerking bodies prefigured the bondage of shackled partners. They both sensed this and struggled to avoid it - backpedalling into the present."

Here's Hugo Rifkind, son of Sir Malcolm: "As she reaches inside [my trousers] I spin her around, pushing her forward over the grey plastic tarpaulin which covers the billiard table," he writes in Overexposure.

"With both hands I push up her skirt, feeling her wriggling her hips to help me."

And Iain Hollingshead in Twentysomething: "Oh Jack, she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair.

"She reaches for my belt. I groan too, in expectation."

Irvine Welsh wrote "disconcertingly strangulated groans coming from the bed told Skinner that he was hitting the spot" in Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs.

"There was more kissing suddenly and it came about quickly that her blouse and bra were on the floor and Philip was deliciously engrossed in the festival of her breasts and mouth," wrote Conrad Williams in The Concert Pianist.

The two Sarahs will also read ruder passages, unsuitable for a family newspaper.

Previous winners include Giles Coren, Tom Wolfe, A A Gill, Sebastian Faulks, Alan Titchmarsh, and Philip Kerr.

"Whoever dares to turn up usually gets the prize," says Lovett.