How often do you have sex? Twice a week? A month? Or even a year? Glamorous comedian Katherine Ryan has admitted she has sex ‘exactly twice a month’ with her partner Bobby Kootstra.

The 40-year-old also revealed the couple diarise their bi-monthly love-making to ensure it happens. Whether you react to that with envy or pity will no doubt tell you much about your own sex life.

Humans, it seems, have an innate interest in what other people get up to in bed. None of us wants to think we’re an outlier, and yet research shows we all over-estimate — often wildly — how much sex everyone else is getting.

In the interests of scientific inquiry, and potentially to make us all feel better, we asked some brave leading writers to reveal their numbers…

I’m semi-retired from sex — it’s liberating

Marion McGilvary, 66

Personally, I have as much interest in sex as I do in a two-week holiday to North Korea.

Fractionally less, if I’m honest. For most of my life Mr Libido has ruled supreme, but with the combination of the menopause (the gift that keeps on giving) and long-relationship fatigue, I’ve finally broken free of its grip.

The urge that wreaked havoc, leading me into so much trouble and the beds of many highly disreputable and truly regrettable men, has finally packed his suitcase and left.

I feel liberated. Luckily my current partner is happily engaged in a loving relationship with football, country walks and his shed, so we are as one on this subject and united by very infrequent, possibly biannual, forays into conjugal bliss.

Turns out neither of us can be bothered. Yes, perhaps if Idris Elba abseiled in with a box of Milk Tray, I might be persuaded… or then again perhaps not.

Who has the energy for a lover, let alone the maintenance required to support one? Not to mention the emotional entanglements that creep in, uninvited, which lead to feelings.

Without them, sex is mechanical. With them, it’s troublesome.

I have all the feelings I need at this point in my life and have no desire to embark on a relationship which will eventually lead me to the same place I am now — watching the telly with a man who wears slippers.

A young friend told me I had given her the best advice ever, which was to make sure she had sex at least weekly and not get out of the habit.

She claims it saved her marriage. It didn’t save mine, but perhaps that’s because he was having it and I wasn’t. But now it’s all moot. I’m semi-retired. Lest you think this is a select club with only a few members, think again. Ask around. Sex is like caffeine. Many of us have given it up.

My lovely whippet is getting in the way

Hannah Betts, 52

The actress Mrs Patrick Campbell described marriage as the ‘deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue’.

After nine years together, the profundity of our peace is indeed pure bliss. Nothing makes me happier than hitting the sack with Terence, 49. However, rather more hurly-burly would be welcome.

The lack of it is not for reasons of boredom or complacency. Far from it. Instead, a blight descended upon our erotic existence when we began living together five years ago — a blight that is beautiful, neurotic and hotly adored. In short, we’d be at it a lot more were it not for Pimlico, our whippet, who is the ultimate barrier-method contraception.

Pim body-blocks anything remotely resembling sexual contact, from catching each other’s eye upwards.

At night, she sleeps between us, or between our legs, guarding against any possible action. As a dog therapist we consulted explained, ours is a polyamorous throuple in which the focus is very much on her.

The irony is not lost on me that I type this after a weekend in which we set Pim up on a romantic mini-break to see whether she would like to get to know a dashing whippet bachelor. Alas, they appeared content to remain in the friend zone.

But we were Pim-less and able to enter the erotic one. It was wonderful; middle-age brings with it a fabulously improved skillset. It made us realise how ridiculous we are being.

We’re lucky enough not to have children to get in the way and still find each other attractive. Time to resolve this ‘high days and holidays’ lunacy.

We shower together after the school run

Kate Wills, 39

When I tell other women in long-term relationships that my partner Guy and I have sex four to five times a week, they look shocked.

Most of my social circle only manage it a couple of times a month. A few of them haven’t had sex in more than a year. That seems like a real shame to me.

When Guy and I first got together in 2019 we would have sex every day, sometimes several times a day.

Of course, now we’re older and have a three-year-old daughter, our magic number has gone down a bit. But we always try to make time to have sex regularly, even if that means scheduling it in.

I love feeling desired and sexy; it is one of the few times in the day when I can turn my to-do-list-whirring-brain off.

A big mistake I think a lot of couples make is waiting until the very end of the day to even think about initiating sex.

That’s when you’re at your most tired and/or too full because you had a curry for dinner.

Guy and I will sometimes set an alarm half an hour before our daughter wakes up so we can have morning sex, or we’ll shower together after we’ve dropped her at school. There’s no rule that sex has to be in the bedroom with the lights out.

I think it helps that we both work from home, so we can sneak in a quick cuddle in the middle of the day. Yes, we do triple check that our Zoom cameras are turned off!

At 63 my sex life is better than ever

Sudi Pigott, 63

Being in love again just post 60 is exhilarating, sometimes tempestuous, and my sex life is better than ever.

Yes, in the heady early days of meeting Stephen, we’d almost always go to bed as soon as he arrived in London from his Suffolk cottage, or as soon as I got to his place.

Even as a committed foodie writing on restaurants and all things culinary for a living, dinner had to wait and take second place.

More than two years on, our appetite has settled a little and we rarely wake up in the middle of the night for a spot of fun as we did.

Yet, we remain joyously hungry for each other.

We met through a dating website after I’d had a long period of short-term, intermittent relationships with only occasional really good sex and more inconsiderate or simply poor or incapable performers.

What perhaps helps to keep the passion so ignited is that we don’t live together. Stephen still lives in Suffolk three nights a week, so it always feels exciting when we see each other again.

Yes, the realities of life and work have intervened, yet we still average sex twice a weekend, unless we’re on holiday and have all the time in the world.

Our most regular time for sex is Sunday mornings. Stephen flexes his barista skills to bring up coffee in bed.

Then we have plenty of time for unhurried, considerate sex before listening, rather appropriately, to Michael Berkeley on BBC Radio 3’s Private Passions.

I live on a boat and it’s too cold for intimacy!

Hilary Freeman, 52

These days, my partner Mickael and I talk about having sex far more than we actually do it.

The conversation, in bed, usually goes something like this. Me: ‘How long is it since we had sex?’

Him, mentally calculating: ‘I don’t know. It has been a while. After that party? We should probably do it.’ I reply: ‘Yes, and I’d like to, but I’m much too tired and you have to get up at five.’

‘OK.’ Looking hopeful, ‘Let’s do it tomorrow night?’

And when tomorrow night arrives: ‘I’m sorry but I can’t keep my eyes open. Let’s do it on Saturday.’

And so on. Put simply, while our minds are willing, our bodies are generally too knackered.

Mickael does shift work, often leaving in the early hours or returning after midnight.

Factor in that we have a curious eight-year-old child and that we live on a boat with thin, plywood walls, and sex goes out the porthole.

When we first got together, 14 years ago, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

Our relationship was long-distance for three years, which helped to prolong that exciting, honeymoon phase.

Of course, we are older now and familiarity saps desire. But sex is still important to both of us. We always get on better when we’ve been recently intimate.

As an agony aunt who frequently gives sex advice, I’m aware that experts say you’re supposed to schedule love-making to end a dry spell.

But dishing out advice is easier than taking it. Diarising sex simply doesn’t work for us.

It makes it feel like just another chore — buy milk, do tax return, have intercourse — and we need the frisson of spontaneity.

That’s particularly hard to come by at this time of year, when the boat is so cold that we go to bed wearing deeply unsexy (and impractical to quickly remove) socks, thermals and leggings.

However, all is not lost. If you average it out, we still manage sex twice a month.

Friends discuss how to avoid having sex

Susannah Jowitt, 55

Evening sex doesn’t work once you get to the age of separate bedtimes. I want to enjoy a long hot soak in the bath, while hubby drops off after one page of his latest heavy biography.

Over the 25 years of our marriage, Sunday morning has become the only time we wake up together and know we’ve got nothing else pressing to do. Books are set aside. Phones are left on silent. Knees start to tremble.

Sadly, even this pedestrian routine is racy in comparison to many of our friends. They haven’t had sex for weeks, months, even years.

I know this from too many girls’ nights when talk turns to how to avoid having sex with your husband. One friend has cultivated a pre-bed beauty routine so heavily laced with unguents and serums that her husband would simply slide off her without gaining purchase, even if he could ignore the medicinal aromas and death-pallor of the creams.

The trouble is that women have often stopped fancying their husband, though they still love them. This is the trouble with everyone being on HRT: we feel young, sexed-up and vibrant once more — but our husbands are not on HRT and are often fat, bald and snore.

I do have two pairs of friends who still have sex every night. My husband and I talk about them in tones of awe. Every night! ‘It’s why I have no social life and never get to read the book-club book,’ one of them tells me.

‘Neither of us drink any more so it’s how we guarantee a good night’s sleep,’ says the other.

By Alesia Stanford for Dailymail.Com

Published: 7:58 PM EST, January 30, 2024 | Updated: 8:04 PM EST, January 30, 2024

By Sharon Mai for Dailymail.Com

Published: 3:52 PM EST, December 25, 2023 | Updated: 4:04 PM EST, December 25, 2023

By Sam Joseph Semon for Dailymail.com

Published: 7:18 PM EST, December 11, 2023 | Updated: 7:53 PM EST, December 11, 2023

The author dubbed ‘the new Tolkien’ after winning multiple awards, including this week’s 2023 Waterstones book, says a family tragedy still defines her work.

Katherine Rundell, 36, has published six children’s books and is proving to be a formidable force in children’s literature: she started writing for children at the age of 21 and won the Costa Prize in 2017 at the age of 30 for her book Explorers.

She describes her work as ‘wildly unlikely adventure stories’; Bea Cavarhlo, CEO of Waterstones, said this week that the book that won the booksellers’ prize, Impossible Creatures, is ‘as perfect as fiction can be’.

Warhorse writer Michael Morpurgo has said of her work, “There was Tolkien, there’s Pullman, and now there’s Katherine Rundell.”

Behind her success lies a childhood tragedy that, according to the writer, who shares her life with film and literary agent Charles Collier, has shaped the literature she writes.

She said last year BBC Radio 4’s Private Passions that the loss of her foster sister when she was ten had a huge influence on her decision to write for children.

Born in Kent, the 36-year-old author spent much of her childhood in Zimbabwe, where her father was a diplomat; she grew up with an older brother and two foster sisters.

This week she said The Telegraph: ‘She had an inherited genetic disease, which meant she died when she was 16.

“I’m always wary of talking about it too much because it’s so important to me and so private, but I loved her very much, and losing her has taught me that the things you love, could be lost.’

She told the Radio 4 program in 2022 that the grieving process was “the great, lasting tragedy of my life”, and said it was no coincidence that she lost her sister at the age of ten and that she now writes for ten-year-olds.

Rundell also praised her own parents for letting her and her siblings run “wild and free” during their childhood, describing it as “the greatest gift.”

The author has also been vocal about her views on famous authors, telling The Times this week that she is unhappy with the stranglehold that famous faces have on the children’s book market.

Rundell said the likes of David Walliams, Dermot O’Leary, Rochelle Humes and other famous authors are shading other writers and saying children need to see “a wide range of books”.

She said The times: ‘I think what children need most urgently is access to a huge amount of books, and our current ecosystem of children’s fiction means that what is readily available tends to be the Walliams of the world.’

She added that they “need access to a wide variety of books so they can see characters like themselves; It’s no mystery how to get kids to read; There is very good evidence that you can make a child fall deeply in love with books.

“It just requires a small shift in our current market from the way it currently works.”

Walliams in particular has had huge success in this area, having first written The Boy In The Dress in 2008, followed by fourteen more children’s novels, including Mr Stink, Ratburger and Billionaire Boy, which have sold more than 35 million copies worldwide.

At more than £100 million, his book earnings outweigh his showbusiness earnings, and when WH Smith listed the most popular children’s books of 2020, three of his were in the top ten, beating even JK Rowling.

His output is enormous: he publishes at least two books a year, including picture books for younger children and short story collections.

Seven novels have been adapted for television – which he also produces and in which he plays the leading role – and five have been made into stage performances.

His success reflects a growing trend in which bookstore shelves are increasingly filled with novels written by household names – with experts pointing out that a bit of literature, often written with a ghostwriter, can be a lucrative sideline for stars in any field.

‘Tis the season to get out and do some Christmas shopping.

Chris Pratt and wife Katherine Schwarzenegger started the month of December on Friday with a shopping trip together in Los Angeles.

From the looks of it, it looks like the couple — who recently volunteered to serve Thanksgiving meals — has already had some success finding the perfect gifts for friends and family members.

The 44-year-old Jurassic World star was spotted returning to their parked SUV with holiday berries in one hand and a large bag containing at least one other item in the other.

As for Schwarzenegger, 33, she appeared to be in charge of their afternoon excursion, walking close behind her husband.

Once they arrived back at their parked vehicle, the Hollywood leading man lifted the rear hatch and they started loading their bags.

The always stylish daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver once again did not disappoint when it came to her fashion.

The author of Rock What You’ve Got: Secrets To Loving Your Inner and Outer Beauty From Nobody Who’s Been There And Back paired black pants with a fitted brown top under a long tan jacket.

Knowing she would be doing a lot of walking, the mother of two opted to wear white sneakers while carrying a large black bag on her right shoulder.

To complete her overall look, Schwarzenegger donned a pair of cool, dark sunglasses and had her brown locks styled long, straight and flowing well past her shoulder with a center parting.

As temperatures continued to climb into the 60s, Pratt left his jacket at home and opted to wear jeans with a black button-down shirt.

He also wore his favorite brown work boots, while his brown hair was cut short, over his ears and off his face.

It appears the couple left their two children – daughters Lyla, three, and Eloise, one – at home with a nanny so they could do their Christmas shopping without too much distraction.

Pratt also has an 11-year-old son Jack, whom he co-parents with his ex-wife Anna Faris, whom he divorced in 2018 after about nine years of marriage.

Before the couple went shopping together, Schwarzenegger posted another episode of her Instagram Live series BDA Baby (before, during and after baby)that focuses on everything related to babies.

Still wearing her figure-hugging brown top, the host welcomed Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse was killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012.

In the decade-plus since his murder, Scarlett has taken the message of nurturing, healing and love that Jesse left her and created the @chooselovemovement, an amazing free program now available in more than 14,000 schools nationwide, from kindergarten to 12th grade, such as homes, businesses and prisons.

The program helps teach mindfulness, character, choice, social and emotional learning, and post-traumatic growth.

A day earlier, Schwarzenegger gave her one million Instagram fans and followers a glimpse into the progress she’s made with her Christmas decorations.

Like most celebrities, Katherine Heigl has a trusted hairstylist she’s worked with for years, but it’s not who you might think.

Heigl, 45, uploaded a hilarious video to her husband’s Instagram on Saturday, November 25, Josh Kelleystyling her hair.

In the video, Heigl recorded himself and Kelley, 43, in a bathroom mirror. Kelley wrapped a strand of Heigl’s hair around a curling iron and put on a pretend Southern accent as he portrayed her role as a hairstylist.

‘I worked with you [Katherine Heigl] because she was nothing,” Kelley joked as he released the strand of hair from the curling iron. “Look, perfect curl.”

“Perfect,” Heigl repeated, laughing.

Heigl captioned the video: “Every girl needs a trusted hairstylist to make her feel beautiful this holiday season… I’ve been working with @joshbkelley for almost 20 years now. No one is better at golfing on the beach than him… or spilling tea! ”

Fans flocked to the comments. One wrote: “Isn’t it great to have a man as a best friend?! ” Another commented: “Love you two, always real, always goals .”

Heigl and Kelley, who have been married since 2007, met on the set of the music video for Kelley’s song “Only You” in 2005. They share three children: Naleigh, 15, Adalaide, 11, and Joshua, 6.

In 2010, the couple left their hectic Hollywood lives for a ranch in Utah, where they have lived happily ever since.

On September 21, Heigl was published on Today with Hoda and Jenna and talked about their decision to move to Utah.

“You know, it’s strange. I think some people are mountain people, and I think some people are beach people,” Heigl said. “I’m kind of a mountain person and I always have been. And my mom realized it, because we went to LA when I was 17 and were messing around for years, right? And I think at some point she realized that I needed a place to escape to and clear my head, and that grounded me.

In an interview with Additional television on September 26, Heigl revealed that although their life in Utah is slower than in Hollywood, the couple is still busy. In addition to raising three children, they also care for horses, donkeys, goats, pigs, chickens, cats and dogs on their spacious ranch.

“I’m sure that’s a lot of work, right?” the interviewer asked.

‘It’s – yes! But it’s so worth it,” Heigl said, adding, “There are a lot of heartbeats and a lot of responsibility and a lot of children and animals to take care of. So we want to get away and decompress for a bit, but then I miss it all so much.”

Katherine Jenkins proved once again that she is the ultimate queen of glamour, as she performed in style at the 11th annual Tusk Conservation Awards on Monday night.

The Welsh singer, 43, turned heads in a red and purple sequin dress with chic black feather sleeves as she arrived at London’s Savoy Hotel.

The mezzo-soprano star looked stunning in the figure-hugging dress, enhancing her lithe physique as she arrived at the event.

The music sensation wore black heels with open straps and accessorized with an equally black bag.

Katherine wore a pair of beautiful black beaded earrings, while she showed off her natural look with delicate pink eyeshadow and peach lipstick.

The performer beamed with joy as she waved her lenses down before entering the star-studded event, which was attended by Prince William, The Prince of Wales.

The Prince of Wales, 41, appeared jovial as he busied himself greeting Tusk ambassador Brendan Scannell, ISPS Handa and wife Margaret Scannell.

Her glamorous appearance comes after the mezzo-soprano opera singer celebrated her ninth wedding anniversary earlier in September.

The star took to Instagram to share sweet snaps with her husband Andrew Levitas as she reflected on her relationship.

The couple tied the knot at Hampton Court in 2014 and the mezzo-soprano wore a traditional white Suzanne Neville dress.

The American artist and Katherine share two children together, Aaliyah Reign, seven, and Xander Robert, four.

Katherine said in her post: ‘9 years ago I followed my heart and it turned out to be my best decision yet.

‘The number 9 represents patience, harmony, friendship, spirituality, unity, strength and completion.

“All the words I understand, all the words that reflect our marriage. Happy 9th birthday, my love! @andrewlevitas #marriage #wedding #weddinganniversary #nine #katherinejenkins #andrewlevitas.”

The album featured a series of loved-up snaps of the couple as they enjoyed holidays together and shared special moments.

Jenkins was previously engaged to TV presenter Gethin Jones in February 2011, but they announced on December 30, 2011 that they were no longer together.

Katherine and Andrew married at Hampton Court Palace.

The couple dated for a year and were engaged for five months.

Their first public appearance was when Andrew accompanied Katherine to collect her OBE at Buckingham Palace.

Andrew and Katherine have two children: a boy and a girl.

Aaliyah Reign, the couple’s first child, was born on September 30, 2015.

Their second son, Xander, was born on April 24, 2018.

Katherine shared a photo of the newborn on Instagram.

She wrote: ‘Our family, our home and our hearts could not be more full of love and we are incredibly grateful for the gift of being parents to these beautiful children. Cwtches to you all xxx.”

By Amy Lamare for Dailymail.Com

Published: 7:08 PM EST, November 21, 2023 | Updated: 7:37 PM EST, November 21, 2023