Letter O

Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that's horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing.

Harlan Ellison

The real reason for the invasion, surely, is that Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, very cheap to exploit, and lies right at the heart of the world's major hydrocarbon resources, what the State Department 60 years ago described as "a stupendous source of strategic power." The issue is not access, but rather control (and for the energy corporations, profit). Control over these resources gives the US "critical leverage" over industrial rivals, to borrow Zbigniew Brezinski's phrase, echoing George Kennan when he was a leading planner and recognized that such control would give the US "veto power" over others. Dick Cheney observed that control over energy resources provides "tools of intimidation or blackmail" — when in the hands of others, that is. We are too pure and noble for those considerations to apply to us, so true believers declare — or more accurately, just presuppose, taking the point to be too obvious to articulate.

Noam Chomsky

Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoön to the philosopher, and this development, we are told, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoön, who gives us this assurance.

Bertrand Russell

Twenty-five years ago I wrote to you to say that the country was over-populated and that people ought to have fewer babies.

  You didn't publish my letter. Now look what's happened.

J.G. Riddall.
Bradwill, Sheffield.

J.G. Riddall in "The Guardian".

In 1980, Desmond Morris created a special body language for the film, Quest for Fire. Filming did not proceed smoothly — one of the main problems was with the circus elephants, who so resented having to wear toupees to impersonate mammoths that they took industrial action and trampled their tent to the ground. 14 years on, Morris retains a taste for creative casting and the cinematic challenge. One can only guess at the indignities suffered by Wendy Duffield of Leyton, East London who ... endured sex three times a day for three weeks with a camera inside her, the better to capture on film the miracle of female orgasm. In the event, Wendy was remarkably accommodating (for £12,000 — probably a good deal more than the going rate for a wig-wearing pachyderm — who wouldn't be?) and was keen to stress that she and her husband Tony are not exhibitionists or bonking bimbos.

Judy Rumbold

18 cameramen worked on the Biology of Love, part of Desmond Morris's series the Human Animal (BBC 1), Joey and Jeff and Jonathan and Jeremy and so forth. One of them must be exceptionally dinky and double-jointed like a human flue brush or a ferret. And brave! I mean, suppose he got stuck down there? Joey — I like to think it was Joey — boldly went where, one suspects, all too many men have been before and came back with film of a female orgasm.

The Biology of Love is the one you have been waiting for and I don't know how you can look me in the eye. It is about human courtship and coupling or, as Desmond Morris puts it, "The eye-up, the pick-up and the chat-up." Leading, of course, to the cock up. Like the human penis which, apparently, doubles in length during intercourse, (who does all this measuring?) it was ludicrously long and with far less excuse.

My son is a TV researcher and, watching the Biology of Love, I worry for the lad. "Careful research in certain night clubs," said Desmond Morris, who tends not to see the joke under his own nose, "has revealed that, the closer girls are to their moment of ovulation, the skimpier their costumes will be." If ever I heard a contradiction in terms, it is "careful reseach in night clubs."

The greater part of the programme was concerned with jog trot observations, lavishly illustrated with girls in G strings. And some theories of a more far-fetched nature. Desmond Morris claims, for instance, that female breasts are back-to-front buttocks. Most primates' sexual signals occur in the rump region but in our species, with its vertical body posture, it was necessary to have a frontal display as well. Just look at these two cleavages! See how similar the shapes are! The BBC describe this series as "A Personal View" which is television shorthand for "I know, I know. Sometimes he needs sedation."

Female physique seemed to attract a disproportionate amount of attention. The rounded, hemispherical breasts of the human female transmit a powerful sexual signal and was illustrated by a woman in the wrong size of bra fondling a dalmation pup. The dog was wearing a stars and stripes hat.

The meat, as with a kangaroo, was in the tail end. This was Wendy and Tony having the most public sex in the history of the world. A heat-sensitive camera showed waves of warmth sweeping over Wendy like an overwhelming blush. And not before time either.

The whole body becomes much hotter to the touch... Waves of heat can be seen escaping from the skin and the open mouth... The red areas spread around the face... The soft, erectile tissue on the side of the nose, an erogenous zone... The lips swollen with blood... Lower down the body it is possible to see the genital region of the female becoming intensely heated as the labia engorge with blood... Do you feel it's getting a bit warm in here? Can we have a window open? Wendy's breath was coming in hot pants, Tony did his biological and contractual duty and Joey's camera caught the gunsmoke of the ejaculation.

This view of our internal universe, the sun of the egg and the sky full of sperm, was genuinely interesting. Much of it, like a space shot, was quite new. Her muscular contractions spread through the genital region to the cervix itself and, seen here on film for the first time, the contractions help to dip the mouth of the uterus repeatedly into the sperm pool and in this way increase the chances of fertilisation. Joey got a good shot. Wendy's uterus behaved very like a uvula. I was reminded of Diana Napier, who married Richard Tauber, the tenor. She said there were few things less conducive to romance than the sight of a man's uvula wobbling about.

Another pioneering piece of film — surely not shot in Wendy — showed sperm from one male fighting off sperm from another. Sperm wars as Desmond Morris inevitably put it. "It is usually imagined," he said, "that the millions of sperm deposited by the male are struggling to fertilise the egg. But new research has proved that only a proportion of them are egg seekers. The rest fight a rearguard action to destroy any foreign sperm that may arrive." New research (he is as fond of the word new as Lever Bros) suggests that a man can unconsciously control the numbers of these killer sperm depending on whether he believed he was the first or the second male to mate with a particular woman.

Here, filmed for the first time, is one in action. The spirited sperm, strikingly like the plant in The Little Shop of Horrors, was biting the head of another. More lethargic sperm were linking tails like synchronised swimmers to form, as Morris put it, an internal chastity belt. Wendy and Tony were decoratively spreadeagled on clean sheets. Science and soft porn had conceived a child.

Nancy Banks-Smith

Talking of patriotism, what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn't a foot of land in the world which doesn't represent the ousting and re-ousting of a long line of successive owners.

Mark Twain

In taking possession of a state the conqueror should well reflect as to the harsh measures that may be necessary and then execute them at a single blow ... Cruelties should be committed all at once.

Niccolò Machiavelli