Ex Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis nominated for 'Bad Sex' literary prize

The Literary Review, which set up the prize 23 years ago, announced this morning that Ellis’s debut novel The Butcher’s Hook, a dark, twisted story of a girl in 18th-century London, was one of six contenders for the award for “the most egregious passage of sexual description in a work of fiction”.
Ellis, who presented Blue Peter in the 1980s, drew praise for the debut when it was published – “a cross between Fanny Burney’s Evelina and US crime drama Dexter,” found the Observer. But the panel of five judges at the Literary Review singled it out for a surprisingly agricultural passage in which Ellis’s heroine Anne consummates her passion for butcher’s apprentice Fub.


“‘Anne,’ he says, stopping and looking down at me. I am pinned like wet washing with his peg.
‘Till now, I thought the sweetest sound I could ever hear was cows chewing grass.
But this is better.’ He sways and we listen to the soft suck at the exact place we meet.
Then I move and put all thoughts of livestock out of his head.”