Former lead singer of The Smiths, Morrissey, has beaten off stiff competition to win this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award with a cringe-worthy scene featuring his main character's "bulbous salutation".
The noted miserablist ultimately impressed judges at The Literary Review with the awfulness of the prose from his first novel List Of The Lost.
Morrissey was not on hand to receive his award, which was announced at the magazine's annual dinner at London's In & Out Club on Tuesday night (UK time).
"In an ideal world this award would be received by Morrissey. Or someone who publishes Morrissey. Or someone who likes Morrissey," tweeted The Literary Review immediately after the winner was unveiled by newspaper columnist and lawyer Nancy Dell'Olio.
Morrissey unfortunately will not attend because the room has meat in it.— Literary Review (@Lit_Review)
December 1, 2015
The award caps off an ignominious start to mononymous musician's literary career after List Of The Lost was widely panned by reviewers, with one critic labeling it "an unpolished turd of a book".
One of key phrases that so excited the panel featured protagonists Eliza and Ezra: "Eliza's breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra's howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza's body except for the otherwise central zone."
This year's steamy and often ridiculous degustation of dodgy bedroom encounters also included a scene from award-winning US crime writer George P Pelecanos' book The Martini Shot.
"She stroked my pole and took off my briefs, and I got between her and spread her muscular thighs with my knees and rubbed myself against her until she was wet as a waterslide, and then I split her," wrote Pelecanos, apparently in all seriousness.
But bad sex writing was not the exclusive preserve of male authors this year. One notable entry from Florida-based novelist Lauren Groff took on a distinctly fruity tone.
"He shut his eyes and thought of mangoes, split papayas, fruits tart and sweet and dripping with juice, and then it was off, and he groaned and his whole body turned sweet," she writes in Fates And Furies.
So, Morrissey has won the #BadSex award. It's quite nice of them to give him an award, really. Bless. He must be so relieved.— Anwen (@Kyatic)
December 1, 2015
Bulbous salutations all round. #BadSex— lastkaled (@lastkaled)
December 1, 2015
The Bad Sex awards were established in 1993 to discourage poorly written sex scenes in contemporary fiction. Previous winners include Melvyn Bragg, Norman Mailer and Ben Okri.
