Piling on the agony in an unshockable world

Agony aunts have been with us for centuries, reflecting the values of their times, but they are having to try harder now to shock their audience, writes KATE HOLMQUIST

THE AGONY AUNT never goes out of fashion – and has been in fashion longer than you think. The first was in the Ladies' Mercuryin 1693; it advised British wives, widows and virgins on marriage, widowhood and virginity, as well as etiquette at "Tea Table". The agony uncle Jonathan Swift dispensed personalised advice, later to be regarded as literature, in Journal to Stella.

Even in the 17th century publishers knew that readers would grasp the opportunity to express in public the torment of their real and private lives – the original reality show, in a way. And in the 21st century little has changed, with confession and advice sites now a web staple.

Agony aunts may be wise and unflappable, like Claire Rayner who died this week at the age of 79. No sexual practice shocked her; she'd only tell you how to do it safely. Or they may be witty and ironic, like the insensitive Mrs Mills in the Sunday Times.

While many have been paragons in their personal lives, a large number have not, which is perhaps why their advice is compelling. Rayner was a self-confessed wild child, Sally Brampton is a recovered alcoholic and Ozzie Osbourne has been in so many tight spots physically and emotionally that there’s hardly a question a reader can ask that the old rocker hasn’t personally experienced. (His fallback answer seems to be: “Don’t do drugs like I did.”)

And there was Ireland’s “Dear Frankie” – Frankie Byrne – who for decades was the rock of sense, titillating and informing in equal measure. She was then revealed to have had a love child with her broadcasting colleague Frank Hall during a 30-year affair.

But while agony aunts come and go, their advice has changed little. A friend who would steal your boyfriend isn’t a friend. A married man will break your heart. Treat him mean to keep him keen. Know when to follow your head, not your heart, and vice versa.

For 20 years until 1980, Angela MacNamara's Sunday Presscolumn was so widely read that she ranked in influence with the political activist Bernadette Devlin and the writer Edna O'Brien. Toeing the Catholic line made MacNamara no less outrageous: just writing about sex was enough. She answered three questions every week in print but personally answered a further 30. Today, about to turn 80, she says she still receives and answers letters from her correspondents. Typical advice then: "A girl who says she cannot refuse the inappropriate advances of a boyfriend, and consequently allows him to use her to gain physical experience and emotional release, is not encouraging either that boy or herself in the controlled behaviour fitting human beings."

Nearly half a century later, writing in the Evening Heraldthis week, the former Miss World Rosanna Davison advised: "Sex with your boyfriend should happen when you are ready, and not because you feel pressured to sleep with him . . . You would quite possibly regret it."

Agony aunts, such as Jenny Distaff in the 19th-century Tatler, have, through the centuries, been expected to epitomise the values of the day in beauty, ethics and deportment, so the choice of Davison seems perfect today.

And while Distaff advised wives on how to cope with husbands who had “convulsions” during “fits of passion”, advice has progressed to exceedingly specific sex tips for teenagers who know an actual convulsion when they see one.

One woman recalls her innocence at finding out about kissing from the Cathy and Claire column in Jackiein the 1970s: "They suggested practising on your own hand." Another remembers being told in Fab 208never to "leave home without taxi money".

Rayner, though, helped drag women from the oppression of the hearth into a new feminist world, making her more than just an agony aunt. In the days before the web and reality TV, agony columns were among the few public forums for women’s interior worlds.

The secret of a good column has always been the reader identifying with the question from “Confused” and hanging on to the reply to “Dear Confused” as if it has been written for them alone.

Readers have their favourites, some more extreme than others. Dear Linda, in the Sunday World, gave comforting answers to lonely, sexually inexperienced farmers for 25 years, while for the sophisticated urbanite Mariella Frostrup in the Observeris essential reading as she advises lesbians how to find wives and tells frustrated wives whether to sleep with the hunky gardener. She also shows infinite patience with the neurotic types who take everything Freud said literally.

Dear Deidre, in the Sun, is ideal if you've developed performance anxiety while in a threesome with your aunt and your sister's best friend.

But sex isn't so shocking any more, so, to keep their readers and listeners, agony aunts are trying harder to be controversial. Virginia Ironside of the London Independenthad to explain herself this week for saying that "any good mother" would "smother" her child if he or she was in unrelievable agony.

This summer in the US Laura Schlessinger was slammed for saying that blacks and whites shouldn’t marry out of their race.

With readers’ most intimate questions no longer able to titillate, some agony aunts are becoming shockers themselves – something Jenny Distaff would surely not approve of.