No sex, please – we’re your parents

Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents…

Finally, at the age of 52, I’ve had a conversation with my mother about sex.

I got the downstairs telly to support Netflix and was treating my parents to their first free movie on the network.

They got into cinema mode: Mother tutted at the time it took me to convince the Netflix screen I wasn’t a child, while Father fell into a deep sleep.

My parents have various requirements when it comes to films. It must be British and not contain toilet humour, violence or sexual language. Many genres, from thrillers to chillers, are strictly forbidden. Their sweet spot is kitchen-sink – but as far away from the sink as possible.

23 Walks was ideal. ‘Dog walkers finding later-life love’ was a safe bet. I crossed my fingers and pressed play.

My parents thought it was too young and American for their tastes. They declared that they would split the 90-minute film into half-hour viewing sessions.

Mother said, ‘We’ll slot it in between a quiz and Kirsty Wark staring cross-eyed at some startled junior minister.’

On the final evening of 23 Walks, my bedroom was invaded by a non-knocking mother. She demanded an immediate explanation as to why I’d forced her to sit through 15 minutes of ‘filthy moaning’ business: ‘I expected it of the Geordie man, but Alison Steadman should know better than getting involved in this game.’

I robustly defended the cinematic convention of using the sex act as an allegory for change or opening up.

Mother scoffed, ‘She had nothing left TO open up! And there was absolutely nowhere left to put any change!’

I said, ‘The characters were having an epiphany.’

‘Epiphany! Let me assure you there was nothing godly going on under that duvet. No incense. No knackered male adult choir doing a second circuit of the main aisle because the temporary vicar is a showy devil. No passive aggression from the ladies’ lunch trio in the third row. This was what I can only describe as a full game of human shuffleboard you infected my front room with. Your father hasn’t reached for a remote quicker –and that includes when Matthew Bourne put too many nuts in his Nutcracker!’

(Father did fall off the Chesterfield reaching for the remote, ironically catching his own nuts on the coffeetable leg.)

I can’t now rest, post-supper, in pyjama bottoms alone, without worrying about a wrathful mother barging in, like Mark Kermode in drag, denouncing modern film. As a diversionary tactic, I now phone the local cinema for advice.

‘I note you are currently screening The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. If you’re not too busy, could you pop in to the screen and let me know if Jim Broadbent is removing his trousers at any point?’

Kelli, who explains she started only on Thursday, hands me over to her line manager, Maurice, a kindly man who is far too brusque for someone who has chosen a career in show business: ‘Mr Clarke, I told you last week it’s not my job to determine whether Richard Eyre’s Allelujah is full-on Trot propaganda or has more Carry On vibes. I neither know nor care whether The Railway Children Return is “anachronism-free” or not.’

‘I’m only asking for a friend,’ I said. ‘An elderly male friend, who finds a casual cinematic anachronism more triggering than a contextually inappropriate nipple.’

Maurice suggested I look on the British Board of Film Classification website and search for ‘contextually inappropriate nipple’. By the time I explained I wasn’t searching for nipples but trying to avoid them, Maurice had gone. But mother was towering under me. Because she is 4ft 7in, she can often enter a room undetected.

When she heard mention of the word ‘nipple’, she shook her head – in sadness more than anger – and asked me that dreaded question, ‘Is it time we had that talk, son?’