'Tis the season to be jolly careful: Rod Liddle reveals that extra-marital relations are more likely to be associated with fertility.

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 28-DEC-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

FIRST, an apology. I should have warned you about this before. I should have let you know at least two weeks ago. By now the rogue seed may already have been sown. Telling you about it at this stage is most likely a case of locking the stable door after the priapic stallion within has well and truly bolted. So, I'm sorry; what else can I say?

Anyway, every year at this time we find ourselves celebrating the birth of Our Lord with a surfeit of alcohol and mammon, as the bishops, glowering with opprobrium, regularly remind us. But some of us also participate in a reckless orgy of licentiousness and infidelity, confident that this is the one time of the year when it is rather expected of us. And we can, in all good conscience, get away with it.

The bacchanalia begin in or around the second week of December with the advent of many office parties. Infused with the idea that this is an occasion to reach out and give to other people, we find ourselves, at bang on midnight, sneaking behind the arras (or into the lavatory cubicles, perhaps) with Chantal...

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