Yes! Yes! Prime Minister... A movers' and shakers' guide to sex and power

Don't know your three-line whip from your public-private partnership? Confused about that special relationship? Fear not. John Walsh unravels the mysteries of sex in high places

"There are only two certainties in life," remarked Woody Allen, "sex and death – but at least after death, you don't feel nauseous." Fourteen years after their affair, John Major and Edwina Currie may be feeling nauseous about the extent to which its revelation in the press has flooded the imagination of the nation. It's the hot gossip story of the year, because it uncovers the delicious intertwining of public office and private lives. Behind the moralising, the hand-wringing and the rewriting of history, a blunt question trembles on everyone's lips: how could they possibly have fancied each other? And the simple answer is: because they were both in positions of power.

Ah, those heavenly twins, Power and Sex. We can't quite understand how they feed off each other, but we know they go together like Will and Grace. We see how powerful men, no matter how ill-favoured by nature, have the pick of the Amazonian blondes in Washington or Hollywood. How holding office at Westminster can make the most unprepossessing male a sex-magnet [David Mellor? Steve Norris?). Late nights in the Palace of Westminster could make otherwise sane men lust after Margaret Thatcher. And, as we now know, meetings of true minds in the Whips' Office can turn the participants into passionate romantic leads. Like Antony and Cleopatra, they can later wail, "We have kiss'd away/ kingdoms and empires."

But is sexual arousal generated by power, or innate in ambitious people? Later this month Margaret Cook, the agony aunt, consultant haematologist and Wronged Woman, will publish Lords of Creation: The Demented World of Men in Power, in which she studies the careers of world leaders from Cromwell and Pope Alexander VI to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, taking in Hitler, Mao and Churchill along the way, and addressing the question: "Which comes first, the sexual drive or the hunger for power?" She concludes that, once a man reaches a position of power, his libido tends to start throwing its weight around, too. She divides powerful men into those who behave like alpha male gorillas (and try to impregnate as many females as possible), and those who remain faithful to one partner but channel their energy into threatening displacement activities, which she calls "sabre-rattling".

Some may find Ms Cook's taxonomy too simple and too condemnatory of men. Others may think her book the start of a new honesty about the way we discuss the taboo subject of power: how to do it, which positions to adopt, the role of fantasy and foreplay, the mutual engrossment, the climactic rapture. Here's our contribution to The Joy of Power. Forget what you learnt from The Joy of Sex about the missionary position, la cuissade, le postillionage and la négresse. Follow these simple instructions, practise these exciting new positions without shame or embarrassment, and the bliss of modern power could be yours to enjoy in the comfort of your own boudoir.

Position 1: The mid-life crisis

This threesome takes a lot of nerve. The man is ideally in his late forties, successful, respected, gimlet-eyed, beetle-browed, full of gravitas. Despite his facial similarity to a stoat hiding behind a lavatory brush, he feels he is a commanding, awesome, godlike international figure (like Kissinger, but without the long silences), and a triumphant catch for a lucky girl. His Life Partner is English, middle-aged, resilient, long-suffering and mildly amused by her partner's foraging for tender flesh. His New Squeeze is young, nervous, overwhelmed by the arrogance of power, and praying nobody will rumble what she (and he) have been up to.

Foreplay here involves the man disappearing on unexplained trysts over several weeks, drinking too much Scotch in the evenings, and ceasing to converse with his life partner. No bed is required for the climactic move; a large public arena is recommended instead. The man and woman proceed, fully clothed, to the check-in desk at Heathrow, where the man inserts a furious row into the conversation. Both partners go at it hammer and tongs for a while, and climax when the man tells the woman he has found a girlfriend, so there, and will shortly be moving in with her. The afterglow is a war of attrition between both parties, as the wronged woman cosies up to the British press, while its tabloid editors attempt to remove every shred of dignity from the man and his mortified new partner.

Position 2: The special relationship

Famous euphemism for a lot of kinky submission-domination games. The partners must be well matched in political outlook (see Thatcher and Reagan), but strikingly different in their attitudes to sex (see Macmillan and Kennedy) and hopelessly unequal in the amount of power they wield internationally (see Bush and Blair). This position does not (as some assume) require the junior partner to wear a studded collar and leash, though he may find himself rolling on the floor at some point, begging to be tickled. The SR requires much mutual oral stimulation (mostly compliments and fond historical reminiscences), in which it gradually becomes clear that the submissive partner is full of passionate hero-worship, while the dominant partner is cruelly exploiting his naïveté in order to make him join in shocking acts of invasion. After spending hours on his knees, the "slave" partner will go home and explain to his suspicious housemates how they must support the dominating figure, how fine, upstanding and admirable he is in his leather cowboy outfit. The alpha male will eventually condescend to visit the slave in one of his own habitats (such as Blackpool), lick him very slowly from head to feet in front of his fellow submissives, and declare his undying adoration. He won't mean it, but it will sound terrific.

Position 3: The back to basics

Though this arrangement can, at first, feel extremely satisfying for power-lovers, it is fraught with danger, guilt and remorse, and gives the man an irritating, but incurable, itch of hypocrisy. In the initial stages it requires lots of mutual tongue-work (mostly on health and housing issues, the balance of payments, the public-sector borrowing requirement), much physical adjustment (she toys with his knitted M&S tie, he fingers her Jaeger lapels), and the manipulation of spouses into believing their partners are working late. When the temperature in the House of Commons becomes too intense, the partners must adjourn to a Private Flat, where the man parades about in blue underpants while the woman paints his flesh with chocolate sauce from British Home Stores. Two refinements are essential: soon after starting this high-risk affair, the man must launch a new initiative, insisting that his fellow MPs observe strict, unimpeachable moral conduct in their private lives; and the woman must start writing about their sex life, first in novel form, then as a diary, while agreeing on the importance of absolute secrecy. Sophisticated partners may like to try the stop-start variant, where the man withdraws and calls the whole thing off, only to start it again some months later, when his wife and lover are under the same roof. There is no afterglow. But there may be a huge conflagration, 14 years later.

Position 4: The missionary

A curious anomaly, in that it involves several thousand partners, of whom only one is actually having sex. The male simply adjusts his charcoal-grey power suit, walks onstage in front of a political rally (think Nuremberg, the Politburo, the Labour Party Conference) and extends his arms towards heaven. The audience, though unable to touch him or take part in any erotic interfacing, cheers and calls his name in a pathetic echo of a lover calling out during coitus. The man expresses pleasure at this contact-free response by waving his fists in the air. The audience goes into spasm, yelling and whistling in an adoring torrent that's a collective reaching-out, a touchless fondle, an invisible frottage. The man signals the end of this strenuous, if one-sided, intercourse by leaving the stage, going off to find a TV camera and telling the world how it felt as if the hand of history had touched him on the shoulder. The hand of history is all the man will allow to touch him, for he is beyond sex at these moments; he is in a seraphic, unreachable realm of his own. Unless, that is, he is an American President, in which case he may well exchange bodily fluids with a person from the ordinary world. But if he does – with a young intern, say – he'll deny it, on the grounds that she may have been having sex with him, but he certainly wasn't having sex with her...

Position 5: The dance of the seven weapons inspectors

This is a complex, bravura performance, involving much teasing and role-play. Ideally, the partners should be of different racial origins – the man from, say, rural America, impetuous, volatile, inarticulate; the "woman" from the mysterious Middle East, sleek, capricious, full of tantalising promises. The man knows that she could easily do him harm, but this only increases his masochistic fascination. He hates, and he loves to hate, this minxy Jezebel. He loves, and he hates to love, her kohl-drenched eyes, her musky, sinful otherness. To be performed successfully, this position requires a huge arena – perhaps the whole planet. The man, convinced of his power, expects to frighten the woman. But she laughs in his face. He demands to see what weapons of sexual conquest she is hiding. She refuses to let him. He puts on a policemen's uniform. He stamps and shouts. He tells the neighbours she is a whore. "OK," she teases, "come and look, if you think you're hard enough." Is she bluffing? The man tears his hair. He will not come and inspect her arsenal now, not even if she begs him. And he will teach her a lesson she won't forget, because she is bad and must be punished... This can go on for months, as the woman alternately shows, then hides, what she's got to offer, like Salome with her seven veils, and the man grows ever more flushed and excited. Intensely frustrating for all participants, this can easily end in tears.

Position 6: The sabre-rattler

Many couples like to experiment with swords, swagger sticks, hats, facial hair and other accessories vaguely suggestive of a phallus. Hence Cromwell's mace, Churchill's cigar, Harold Wilson's pipe, Stalin's caterpillar moustache, Napoleon's tricorn hat, Edward Heath's 40ft yacht and Mao's little red thingy. Some partners complain that these are merely props, comfort objects. Others claim that these "power toys" can enrich your life in very satisfying ways. Marcia Falkender, it was revealed this week, liked to brandish a telephone in front of Harold Wilson's advisers and colleagues, and announce that it would take only one call to end his career by blowing the whistle on their affair. With Edwina Currie, it was with a book, 8in long, that she had intimidated her former partner for years. Remember that, in global power-games, accessories are used not for pleasure, but for discomfiture, sometimes for outright hostility. Start by telling your partner they must do as you require, or you will be forced to tie them up, gag them, torture them and finally send a gunboat up their main estuary. If they still fail to accommodate you, it may be time to try directing some freshly lubricated F-16 fighter aircraft into their backyard. It may sound excessive, even a little brutal. But remember: in the world of Power, tough love conquers all.