12/01/2005

Charles Spencer reviews Tim Fountain: Sex Addict at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs

Tim Fountain strolls on to the stage in his scruffy jeans and rumpled white shirt and gets straight down to business. "This is the show," he says with a leer, "where you decide who I shag tonight." Ninety minutes later, we have done just that. Tom Stoppard it ain't.

Fountain, an amiable Yorkshireman of 37, is a former literary manager of the Bush Theatre, and an accomplished playwright. How he finds time for his artistic pursuits I'm not sure, for he seems to be far busier with his penis than with his pen, proudly claiming to have had sex with 5,046 men, and two women. In the old days, he satisfied his addiction by cruising public lavatories, but the internet has made casual gay sex easier and, usually, less smelly.

On sites such as Gaydar it is the easiest thing in the world to hook up with like-minded men. Fountain regales his audience with tales of arcane sexual practices that make the eyes water and memorably describes some of his own more bizarre experiences, one involving a dwarf and a bag of liver.

"Some of you are probably wondering why I do it," he says. "In fact, my mother asked the same question only last week. Well, the fact is I love shagging strangers."

When Fountain tried out the show in Edinburgh this summer, Gaydar threatened legal proceedings, on the grounds that it breached its clients' confidentiality. Whether it is possible to breach the privacy of people soliciting for sex on the internet, often accompanied by nude full-frontal photographs, is open to question, but Fountain has now launched his own site, with punters logging on to request sex with him.

In the course of the show, he chats with them online, talks to them on the phone and at the end the audience votes on which of the night's contestants has got lucky. The following evening, he reports back on his tryst.

Fountain says he wants to extend his limited experience with women, but at Monday's performance all the volunteers were men, including one called Humiliated Gay, describing himself as "a submissive, middle-aged slut" who, among much else, wanted to grovel naked at Fountain's feet.

The winner, however, was a member of the audience called Peter, who said that after being celibate for seven years he was keen to make up for lost time and "thought it would be a good idea to go with the most experienced man on the planet".

Fountain in turn was relieved that he would be able to have a quick bonk in his dressing room rather than setting off on his electric bicycle to meet the lucky winner. Unfortunately, I learn from Fountain's website, the Royal Court banned the tryst on its premises for legal reasons.

Does Sex Addict offer anything more than debased titillation for our voyeuristic age? Well, Fountain is a surprisingly engaging performer, and his show certainly opens a revealing window on a world that, as a married heterosexual, I look on with a mixture of envy and revulsion.

But underlying all his frank good humour, I thought I detected a note of a Don Juan-like weariness in Fountain, for whom casual sex has become as habitual as a cup of tea. And what about the risk of Aids and physical violence, subjects entirely unmentioned in the show?

The final impression is of a hedonistic moral wasteland in which sex has become chillingly divorced from love and tenderness. I have rarely returned to the safe, familiar comforts of the family home with greater gratitude.