Having dismantled the whole, we are left trying to regulate the fragments. We teach young people about consent, contraception, boundaries, sexual health and personal choice, and fail to tell them what sex actually means, and what it is for. It is into this world that Russell Brand exploded.

We are inclined to laugh at the courtship rituals of our grandparents. The chaperones, the dances, the young man arriving at the front door in a jacket and tie, the nervous introduction to the girl’s father, the expectation that a man should declare his intentions. How quaint it all seems.

But perhaps we should ask ourselves who has the greater claim to wisdom. The generation which believed that a man ought to marry a young woman before being granted the privilege of intimacy with her, or the generation which thinks it perfectly acceptable to have sex with a stranger? The generation which regarded chastity as a virtue, or the generation which regards virginity as an embarrassment?