This isn't just disgusting, it's downright sinister and evil. My flesh crept as I looked at Roger Hughes, the misguided headmaster of Sherwell Valley School in Torquay, Devon, who had the gall to defend showing the sex education video to pupils aged between four and six on the grounds that "girls are maturing earlier."
No defence at all.

Teachers are in loco parentis.

Is this man loco showing girls and boys of so tender and impressionable an age such graphic pictures?

It is morally wrong that any bairn should be exposed to this.
In one section, the Living and Growing Lessons give detailed descriptions of men's and women's genitals and the effects of touching them.

How sick. For five-year-olds to be shown illustrations of naked adults and asked to label body parts and older children shown an animation of a couple having sex is obscene and obscenely cruel.

These are infants, barely out of nappies, who haven't yet learnt their ABCs. I could weep for them. It's all too much too soon.

Their young minds can't assimilate such information.

All it will do is shatter their oh, so brief interlude of childhood innocence. It's totally wrong and inappropriate that they should be burdened at their age with the cares of the adult world. They come soon enough.

And what nonsense to suggest, as local education officials have claimed, that the practice is designed to help cut the high rate of teenage pregnancies in the area.

There is absolutely no evidence that encouraging children to become sexually aware in infant school will lead to any long-term reduction in teen pregnancies.

Anyone with common sense knows this might suggest just the opposite.
And for a school, which we consider to be a place of safety, to take it upon itself to immerse very young children in detailed matters of sex education without properly consulting the parents, is disgraceful.

It is for parents to decide when a child hears the facts of life.
And who better to tell them than a loving mam or dad when they think fit.

Our children are too precious to be used by liberal do-gooders to push their half-baked local authority initiatives. And more importantly, they have no right to do so.

One of my three sons told me how as a 15-year-old at his all-boys' school, his class was told the facts of life in a cartoon with a real life film of a woman having a baby. He said: "One lad fell off his chair at the sight of all the blood and we spent the rest of the lesson covering him in blankets."

And a pal in the newsroom recalled how he was 11 when his dad told him after his mother had a baby with: "Reet son, come here. We need to have a talk."

He said: "I had a feeling what was coming. When I was at school you were probably 13 before anything was said. And the girls were given a condom to put on a banana."

And I'll never forget a family planning boss telling me in all seriousness: "You can't teach sex on a blackboard."

While Roger Hughes reviews the policy with governors at the school, it's high time this man who has not even apologised, realises what a grave error he has committed and admit it.

But for those poor bairns who have seen this video, there's no turning back the clock and no knowing what damage it has done.

Apparently, thousands of copies of this Channel 4 sex education pack has been sold to primary schools in the past seven years.

Quite rightly, parents at other schools have protested and some were reduced to tears, horrified at the contents.

What is happening in our world when supposedly responsible adults so lacking in common sense and moral judgment, become purveyors of more corruption in their quest to come up with an answer to teenage pregnancies?

As one mother said: "It's liberal claptrap."

Of course, Roger Hughes thinks different and has said he would be quite happy for his children and grandchildren to watch the video.

He added: "Saying we are teaching four or five-year-olds about touching their clitoris sounds shocking. But in the context of the video it is taught well and is not offensive.

"It will go over the heads of most but some children will understand."
So why do it? There never was or is any justification for showing it. Mr Hughes and his fellow cohorts who see no harm in the video would do well to consider the fact that soaring numbers of schoolgirls are contemplating suicide to escape their problems.

Girls as young as five now feel there is "no way out." Why?
Because they are beset from childhood by pressure to grow up before their time, suffering such anxiety that four out of five calls to Childline talk about suicidal feelings from girls.

More than 1,000 calls – one in six – were made by girls of all ages at crisis point and some even tried to take their own lives while on the phone to the 24-hour service.

Clearly our children are in deep despair. And as I reported on this page last week, ours are the unhappiest in the developed world according to a UN study.

They desperately need our love and protection. And if and when their lives are rocked to its very foundations, we let them know, no matter what, we'll always be there for them and never let go.

We must leave this cycle of shopping and debt behind

IT'S one thing having a sagging pole in the wardrobe that is telling me it's ready to collapse under the strain and quite another being crippled by almost £12,000 of debt because you are obsessed with shopping.

My clobber fills five wardrobes but at least it's paid for and I'm no shopaholic or one of the 750,000 women who just can't stop spending at the shops on credit cards, store cards, overdrafts and loans.

All this shop till you drop talk comes at a price and it's one young women under 25 are finding to their cost, with die-hard shoppers owing an average of £11,337 each. In this celeb-obsessed society, they are crippling themselves with mountains of debt, copying the lifestyle of the fashionatas they would love to be.
Time to get real.

I'm Wilde about his witticisms

WHAT a wit. And I just couldn't resist sharing these witticisms from the master of the devastating riposte and withering put-down.
Oscar Wilde was never lost for words and a new book, The Wicked Wit of Oscar Wilde, by Maria Leach (Michael O'Mara) is a gem at £5.99.

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
From Phrases and Philosophies For The Use Of The Young

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
Lady Windermere's Fan

Gwendolen: I had no idea there were any flowers in the country.
Cecily: Oh, flowers are as common here Miss Fairfax, as people are in London.
The Importance Of Being Earnest

I delight in men over 70. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
A Woman Of No Importance

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Lady Windermere's Fan