Get out your sponsor sheets

Want to raise money for charity? Want to wank? Now, for the first time in the UK you can do both.

London will be hosting the UK's first "masturbate-a-thon" next month in which hundreds of men and women are expected to pleasure themselves for charity.

Now, the aims are admirable, raising money to improve sexual health and access to contraception - and to de-stigmatise masturbation as a form very safe sex. Participants are encouraged to break the international record of 8 hours and 30 minutes - or at the very least to set the first English record.

But you have to wonder just how safe internationally competitive marathon masturbation is Think of the hazards. Repetitive strain injury. The chafing.