Torture Garden, London’s infamous fetish club, used to be a secret pleasure. Now, with its rubber-clad dominatrices, slaves crawling on leashes, and full whips and chains glory, the club is so mainstream that it is holding an event tonight at the Barbican art gallery.

The night of music, fashion and aphrodisiac cocktails is to coincide with the gallery’s “Seduced” exhibition in which pictures of Pompeii brothels hang alongside intimate sketches by Rodin, Turner and Picasso. The show is full of art that at one time or other has been locked away, deemed too corrupting for the public eye.

Yet today, most onlookers barely turn a hair. As a sex columnist, I have noticed that it’s not just art that has lost its power to offend. Happily, as this watershed event shows, we are far more laid-back about the act itself, even in its extreme forms.

According to a recent YouGov survey, 37 per cent of us habitually fantasise about sex with a man and a woman, and 29 per cent about being either dominant or submissive in sexual power play.

Recently, when I was writing an essay on rough sex, my editor felt that my references to spanking and knife-play sounded too normal – I should add some shock value, she said. It was only when I touched on electricity play and bloodletting that she felt we had gone far enough.

This evolution of sexual mores can be only a good thing. As recently as 1990 a group of gay men in “the spanner trial” were imprisoned for their consensual, sado-masochistic practices. As society opens its mind to the weirder side of sex, at last there is an opportunity for people to learn how best to enjoy it (safely).

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