Focus: The new decadence

Wild boy Pete loves Kate. We love wild boy Pete. The more we're told to get fit, drink wisely and live safely the more we are enthralled by those who don't.

Every time we start a diet we feel hungry. Every time we go on the wagon we crave a drink. That's human nature. And every time someone in authority urges us to be good to ourselves, not least to take the pressure off doctors and the police, we long to be bad. Or applaud those who are.

Every time we start a diet we feel hungry. Every time we go on the wagon we crave a drink. That's human nature. And every time someone in authority urges us to be good to ourselves, not least to take the pressure off doctors and the police, we long to be bad. Or applaud those who are.

"We want people to have responsible sexual relations, drinking moderately, not smoking, sufficiently exercised," said John Reid, the Health Secretary, in November.

Stuff that, said much of Britain. We know junk food hurts us but it tastes good and it's cheap. We know smoking kills, but 13 million of us still do it. We know safe sex is best, but HIV diagnoses have doubled since 1996, syphilis is up by 28 per cent, chlamydia is on the increase. Thousands of us like dogging, having sex outdoors with or watched by strangers. Even wife-swapping is back.

Jude Law, the most glamorous man in the country, did not take part in wife-swapping when he was married to Sadie Frost, as was claimed last week. He has made that clear. But the fact that someone could even falsely accuse members of the Primrose Hill set, the closest thing we have to the Hollywood A-list, without it seeming like a seedy Seventies suburban joke says everything about how the image of wife-swapping has changed. A million Britons have done it, apparently.

The new head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, probably doesn't care. Not unless there is coke in the middle of the room with the car keys. Sir Ian has promised to spare officers from raiding crack dens in order to go after middle-class types who think it is "socially acceptable" to have "a wrap of charlie" with their ironic Ferrero Rocher.

But the inhabitants of big houses in Hampstead or Alderley Edge are unlikely to be worried. They know the dangers, and what the supply chain does to the people at the bottom, but they don't care. Coke makes you feel like a rebel and rebellion (however tame) makes you feel young.

That same myth explains the appeal of Pete Doherty. Feted as a genius, charged with robbery, addicted to heroin, the singer has been lauded as a hero. So why are we all still addicted to sex and drugs and rock and roll? Experts and users explain.

They want us to be responsible, faithful and safe - but we just want to be naughty

SEX: We are endlessly interested in the sex lives of other people, even when the stories are as false, like those surrounding Jude Law and Sadie Frost. But when the Health Secretary urges us to have "responsible sexual relations" we say, "Mind your own business"

By Virginia Ironside

How far can a Government change social habits by legislation or advice? This Government has certainly succeeded in demonising smokers by outlawing smoking in some public places. And many believe that the Conservatives' Aids awareness campaign did have an effect on sexual mores at the time it was launched. Before that, condoms were for idiots.

But when a minister like the Health Secretary Dr John Reid says - as he did when launching an all-embracing health White Paper in November - that his aim is for people to have "more responsible sexual relations", isn't that just whistling in the dark?

Isn't what we get up to in the bedroom our own affair?

And anyway, how can his squawking, headmasterly words have any effect against a tide of pornography on the internet, movies and television programmes that show explicit sexual scenes, and a press which, by exposing stars getting up to all kinds of sexual monkey business, as my granny used to say, makes "irresponsible sexual relations" more glamorous?

Despite a hugely expensive warning campaign, the number of sexually transmitted diseases soared to 705,954 last year, an increase of 4.6 per cent on the previous year. Despite the memory of those Eighties Aids campaigns, and a much greater awareness of the true risks and myths of infection, the number of people living with HIV in Britain rose to a record level of more than 50,000 last year.

And despite the existence of the Teenage Pregnancy Unit, set up in 1999, we still have the highest pregnancy rate among the under-18s in the whole of Europe. Sexual health experts say warnings are simply being ignored.

The Commons Health Select Committee has criticised sex education and its chairman, David Hinchliffe, says Britain has a "Benny Hill culture" that resorts to nods and winks rather than open and frank discussion.

I believe there are fashions in sexual activity in the same way as there are fashions in skirt lengths. The Government could legislate until it was blue in the face that men should wear pink hats covered with flowers, but however many billions of pounds they threw into the campaign, men would remain pretty much hatless.

The fashion today is for naughty sex. Welcoming stores sell sex toys on the High Street. Up to a million people in this country have tried swinging - or wife-swapping as it used to be called in the Seventies - and 14 in every 100 of the others say they would like to, apparently. Then there is dogging, the pursuit of al fresco intercourse with a partner while strangers stand in the shadows watching, or with the strangers themselves. The website where arrangements are made are busy. Forest glades and car parks are stirred by the sounds of dogging, which even has a semi-celebrity advocate in the former England footballer Stan Collymore. Until people get bored with all this, which they will (or they get bored, at least, with discussing it or trying it out), it will continue to flourish.

Providing teenage girls with a better education and proper job opportunities might be a more sensible way of cutting teenage pregnancy than simply droning on about how irresponsible it is. And setting a good example might be another.

If Carole Caplin could get pregnant without being married, at the time when she was the Prime Minister's wife's best buddy why shouldn't the rest of us? I didn't notice her being cast out into the snow at the time.

As for Chris Smith - ahem, ahem. Very brave to come out about being HIV-positive, but while we don't know the circumstances of his infection, one question does arise: where was the condom when it mattered?

And don't get me started on the subject of David Blunkett. Irresponsible or what? An affair with a married woman and no condoms was not what Mr Reid was talking about when he wanted us all to have responsible sex. The words "mote" and "eye" spring to mind.

A sexual nanny state will never work. First, because what we get up to in bed is our own private business. But second, it's doomed to fail if the nanny in question is always to be found lying on a bed with her legs apart.

Virginia Ironside is a relationships expert and writes for 'The Independent'

THE SWINGER

'I've grown to enjoy it, there's an unspeakable excitement'

Alice, 41, Nottingham

I've always thought of myself as unshockable but the first time I went to a swingers' party, about a year ago, I was stunned by it.

Before I even saw them, I could smell the 15 couples having very public sex in every possible position and configuration, on a series of beds pushed together in an enormous white bedroom. Before I saw them I could hear the grunts, groans, sighs and farts of sex, then the occasional slapped bum or orgasmic moan.

If there were 30 people having sex on the beds, there were probably 20 more standing around watching them, naked or virtually naked, touching each other and themselves, making eye contact with any other spectators they fancied.

A hard-looking bottle blonde wearing a Central Casting rubber porn outfit was strapped into a leather hammock which hung by a rope from the ceiling, pleasuring a queue of about 12 men.

There wasn't a condom in sight. Contrary to all my preconceptions about gorgeous people having gorgeous group sex, like in the movies, everyone there looked fat, tired and just a bit weird.

It was a 'private' party in a big, isolated private house in the Midlands countryside. The hosts and hostesses were the two late-40-something couples who own and live in the house together.

I went along, reluctantly, because my partner had been into swinging before he met me and had loved it. I was disapproving but, I have to admit, hugely curious. As I've got more used to the atmosphere - the painful small talk over cheap wine and cheesy dips at the start, the amateur pole-dancing on the dance-floor, the sense of being eyed up from every which way - I've grown increasingly excited by these parties.

They create an emotional turmoil which I find painful at the time but exhilarating in retrospect - resentment that my partner ever wanted to take us down this road, mild self-loathing fury that I've grown to enjoy it myself, unspeakable excitement at having spectated and sometimes sudden sex with some gorgeous stranger while my partner joins in or watches.

Swinging has inspired insecurities, jealousies and petty rows between us (usually when we've been 'joined' by someone one of us would probably like to have been in a relationship with). But it also keeps our sex life fresh, and allows us to believe, if only for a few hours, that middle-aged people who drive a Ford Focus, shop at Asda and enjoy power ballads, can still go to the dark side.

Coke can kill, but it makes you feel cool

DRUGS: If you clear the plates, pass the port and unwrap the charlie, watch out: the new head of the Metropolitan Police has sworn to target middle-class cocaine users, whose numbers are increasing. Will that work, when we know the dangers but still find hard drugs seductive?

By Tim Madge

Sir Ian Blair may be smarter than his remarks about weekend cocaine users who find it "socially acceptable" to have "wrap of charlie" suggest. Few people can seriously think the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan police will be sending his officers to raid dinner parties at detached houses in posh areas. But going into chic clubs across London, Manchester and other cities and banging up a few - or maybe many - celebrities with their noses jammed against a lavatory seat might just make the increasing number of recreational users pause for thought. I fear it will only be a short pause. Then they will adjust where they take their drug of choice, and move on, a good arm's length away from the dead hand of the law. Why is cocaine so popular among the middle classes? It has long been called the champagne of drugs. Law-makers recognise its allure: users feel sharp, edgy, sexy and clever and - because it has until lately been pricey - rich. Its image could not be further away from that of, say, marijuana. Those who admit to having taken it are usually pop stars, or celebs like Angus Deayton and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson (right) who are both now clean.

Even the ritual surrounding the way it can be taken in a social group makes it attractive to some. Unlike shooting up on heroin (sordid) or pill-popping (dull, nothing happens for ages), or rolling joints (too studentish), cocaine can be brought out as a surprise that provides a "naughty, but nice" response. The mirrored surface on which it is chopped into lines; the rolling of banknotes; the short sharp sniff and then, almost immediately, the rush; there is a cool feel to it all. And those involved feel good; right here, right now.

Cocaine is addictive, but many experts say the effects are more psychological than physiological; it also takes a long time to get seriously hooked. In that sense, its capacity to be a weekend drug is part of the attraction. It is "more-ish" and people do ruin their lives with it but, aside from crack cocaine, the sniffable variety does not appear to give rise to the levels of addiction associated with heroin or even highly potent forms of marijuana. Cocaine can kill: it has a capricious effect on the body's system which is why it is no longer used medically, but deaths are rare.

Cocaine comes from the coca plant of South America; the Incas used the plant to help them feel good, because chewing the leaves gives a mild buzz, like caffeine. It helped Inca messangeres run quite incredible distances, and is still used as an antitode to altitude sickness in the Andes. Aggresively marketed as a legal drug in America in the 1890s, it was still seen as relatively harmless there until the start of the Eighties. A Hollywood drug then, it is still associated with the idea of success. In the last 50 years its influence has extended, at one time or another, right to the top of British society.

The problem is that drugs policy in the UK is moving towards tragedy. Our Government has downgraded cannabis, a drug that is about 14 times as powerful as it was 30 years ago; one that can seriously damage your physical and mental health. But cannabis has mass appeal among the young and even politicians own up to having used it. Sir Ian, you might do better by quietly joining the campaign to re-classify marijuana. If you are going to continue banging on about middle-class cocaine use, I would seriously consider arresting yourself for wasting police time.

Tim Madge is the author of 'White Mischief: a cultural history of cocaine' (Mainstream)

THE USER

'I'm shy, I need something to make me gregarious'

Simon, 45, West London

I've had the same dealer for six or seven years. I've probably paid him about £60,000.

Many of the opportunities I've found at work in publishing have been as a result of parties and indulging. I'm a shy person, so I take something to make me talkative and gregarious.

I realise I have a habit, but I don't perceive it as a problem. You retain a sense of objectivity; you don't lose your faculties.

Because it's a social drug you end up staying up all night talking. It's not drunk blathering or stoner blather, it kind of crystallises stuff. Everything has a clarity - at its best. At its worst you wake up clutching your head with a nose full of snot and your intestines feeling like they're filled with bleach, £50 lighter and you realise you spent hours talking shite.

Cocaine has an acceptable chemical purity. One is aware of contributing to a very grubby business, but the real victims won't be helped by targeting recreational drug users. Alcohol is a more insidious problem.

All the best stars are a mess

ROCK & ROLL: Pete Doherty is a mess, or a genius, or both. The singer is also now a star thanks to his affair with Kate Moss. Is it hype, or is he the latest in a proud line of rock rebels? And why do we still need them so?

By Charles Shaar Murray

Marc Almond put it best: "To me a star is someone who has something extra, and something missing at the same time - flawed and extinguishable, but never mediocre." Exhibit A: Pete Doherty, now more familiar to millions from his tabloid problems as Public Screw-Up Number One than he ever was in his time fronting The Libertines or his aptly named post-eviction project Babyshambles. Stumbling from courtroom to brawl, to failed rehab, to no-show gig, to (stage-managed?) romance with a supermodel, Doherty screams the archetypal mixed message of the drug-addled rocker as Doomed Young Poet in Romantic Squalor: "Screw you!" alternating with "Help me!"

His misfortune is to have commenced his adventures as Epic Mess on Legs before cementing his superstar status. Keith Richards, after all, was firmly in place as the key player in The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World before becoming the defining archetype of junkie cool. And, no matter how messed up he was, Lord Keef always managed to do the gig, to play a blinder even while blind.

Doherty, on the other hand, seems to be travelling the Iggy Pop route. The Ig's reputation for widescreen debauchery preceded his acceptance as a punk grandmaster: indeed, it actively contributed to his legend. Ditto many others, variously dead, alive or somewhere in between: Syd Barrett, Ozzy Osbourne, Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Parker, Sly Stone. However, the hardest trick to pull off is to get loaded beyond human comprehension - and still function well enough to get the job done.

In a sense, Doherty is doing that: Babyshambles and The Libertines are up for awards from the NME, and the man himself is in the running for both Best and Worst-Dressed Man and Hero and Villain of the Year. The magazine has already hailed him as the coolest man in the country. But why? The question needs to be answered by another: what are pop idols for?

Music biz apparatchiks see them as an effective method of separating kids from their pocket money. For the media, they're a source of news, gossip and all manner of sensationalist trivia. For the fan, the idol is either an object of desire or, more significantly, an external manifestation of your real, true self. Only Kurt Cobain or Richey Edwards understood how unhappy you were. Only Sinead O'Connor or Eminem were as angry as you. Only Marilyn Manson knows how grotesque the world is (and how grotesque you feel). Only you can make Robbie Williams truly happy. Only you could have convinced Boy George that sex was more fun than a nice cup of tea. The conventional teen idol functions as love object or role model, but the most interesting ones tend to be damage cases of one kind or another.

Sometimes, the more messed-up teen idols seem to be, the more effective they are. It is a truism that teenagers don't always focus their adoration on artists of whom their parents would approve, but they also don't always respond to the kind of human offerings with whom the music industry's Fat Controllers feel most comfortable. The platonic ideal of the corporate pop idol is clean, pretty, biddable. They won't do anything to disrupt the career plan or cash flow. In other words they're not Pete Doherty.

He is a major talent whose life and career are utterly, publicly out of control. All that is needed now is for someone to figure out how to make serious money out of him. Maybe that could even be Doherty himself.

Charles Shaar Murray has interviewed or written about everyone who was ever any good in rock and roll

THE FAN

'You can't get annoyed at him'

Alison Kiely, 26

I was first aware of The Libertines in 2002. I've seen them play a ridiculous amount, at one point it was every week. I've heard about people rioting at a Babyshambles concert recently when he didn't appear but that 'will he, won't he' was part of the experience for us.

Pete is a lovely bloke who is very genuine and always has time for you, so you can't get annoyed at his behaviour. I remember a gig at the Hope and Anchor in Islington, September 2003, two days before he went to prison. He asked me if I wanted a drink and then realised he had no money, so I ended up buying both. Then he went to prison for two months, and the next time I saw him was at a gig in his house. He came up to me and apologised for not having the money.

Obviously when he started charging £10 to hear a gig in his house we all realised pretty quickly what the money was going towards. It was a bit of a conflict, because while I knew what he was doing, not many bands are prepared to play amazingly for hours in their own home. I suppose he does glamourise drugs a bit and he's a hero to so many because of his music, but everyone can see what he's doing to his life. We watched the interview he gave on Newsnight and my flatmates were crying. He's only 25, hugely talented, and he knows he's risking his life.