Tell-all memoirs of drinking and shagging “used to be the preserve of ageing rockers and actors, talking about things which happened years ago”, says Hilary Rose in The Times. But former England rugby player Danny Cipriani has, aged only 35, written an autobiography “so recent, and raunchy, that the sheets are still warm”. Now happily married, he talks of his time spent regularly sleeping with three women in one day. (“I have to be very disciplined with the timings,” he explains. “Shuffling one girl out of the house just in time for the next one to turn up.”) Threesomes were “the norm”. When he moved to a different rugby club, he would build up a “new squad” of on-call totty. Charming stuff.
But what I object to isn’t all the shagging – it’s the way Cipriani uses mental health as an excuse for his behaviour. He “presents his sexual incontinence as if it’s worthy of philosophical discussion”, as if there’s “some sort of nobility” in seeking comfort with a porn star. Sex, apparently, was one of the “few things” in his life that provided “relief”. He even lays some of the blame with his single mum, for not paying him enough attention when he was little. “Give me a break.” Cipriani was “just a shagger like any other”, a fit young guy with ready access to women who wanted to sleep with him. “End of.” Painting these exploits as some sort of existential struggle just “demeans the real sufferers”.