IT'S official! Lascelles Chin says it's time we stopped sweeping it under the carpet... "Sex is an income earner", he declared at a recent press conference.

No, he wasn't launching a Lasco brand of condoms as you may have suspected. Mr Chin had returned from a fact-finding visit to Thailand and was pointing out that prostitution is widely tolerated there and generates millions of dollars from its sex industry.

According to the Observer report - and I quote - "and Mr Chin knows what he is talking about since he was able to view, first hand, conditions in Thailand." That probably didn't play too well at home, I would guess.

Personally I wasn't aware that sex in Jamaica was under the carpet - on top of it, maybe, but not under it. Only a couple of weeks ago I was intrigued by a newspaper column headed 'Doctor's Advice' that kicked off with the headline 'My Kinky Mr Right'. It was a letter purportedly written by a 24-year-old woman who has a Mr Right who gives her a good time in bed.

So? I read on only to learn he liked to have sex wearing scuba-diving gear, complete with underwater masks (no spear guns) which his partner also reluctantly wore. What did she think she was? A mermaid? Scuba gear immediately eliminates the possibility of foreplay, wouldn't you say, let alone allow for satisfactory penetration. Who makes up these letters anyway?

Dr Peter Figueroa, chief of epidemiology and AIDS in the Ministry of Health, in his own way backs Chin's insinuation that we are avoiding the issue of sex, at least among our young people.

In advocating live demonstrations of putting on a condom as part of the school curriculum, Dr Figueroa said if you didn't know how to put a condom on a dildo before your classmates "you are not going to know how to put it on when it comes to having sex." With one of your classmates, I assume he meant. It wouldn't be long before the youngsters graduate from that to making love in a wet suit.

There's always new information coming out about the value of sex. The University of Paisley in Scotland carried out a study which indicated that if you had sex before giving a major speech it calmed your nerves and significantly improved your abililty to deal with acute stress for up to a week. This was attributed to the release of the hormone oxytocin during intercourse. When Gordon House is finally replaced, no doubt a pre-speech room will be reserved for nervous members of the House and Senate in an effort to improve their (speaking) performance.

But to return to Chin's admonition concerning sex and carpets and his experiences in Thailand. You may have seen a newspaper headline announcing: 'German sex industry awaits World Cup'.

With a million visitors expected in Germany for the 2006 World Cup, red-light districts from Hamburg's notorious St Pauli quarter to Munich where 2,000 prostitutes already work are furiously recruiting to meet the anticipated demand. The report quoted one sleazy nightclub owner as saying "Football and prostitution are a great match" (pun intended?).

One might think that male cricket fans are somewhat more reserved than their soccer counterparts, but a few rampant Aussies will soon change your impressions during the 2007 cricket equivalent to take place in the West Indies. Of course, if our madams, pimps and prostitutes think they can open up for business just so, they haven't counted on the bureaucracy of the ICC Cricket World Cup organisation.

They'll have to fill in a 30-page questionnaire with 40 headings and subheadings covering everything from experience to pricing, to venues to references before being offered a contract.

There will inevitably be requests for samples (for quality-control purposes), an undertaking made to employ only bonafide West Indians (which does not include recently arrived nouveau residents from Eastern Europe) and, of course, royalties will be negotiated. Non-compliance will certainly mean that sex at cricket will be swept under the carpet or at least under the stands.

Yup, sex is in the air in Jamaica and the evidence is clear. The night Sister P won the party presidency, for instance, it was said that more men had better sex with their partners than they had enjoyed for many a moon.

The fear factor

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS