Sebastian Faulks: Not up for attending award

The winner did not attend to claim his dubious honour - the first time a winning author has not turned up.

Faulks, who topped the best seller list and won critical acclaim for his World War I saga Birdsong, won the award for his latest novel Charlotte Gray.

Some of his prize winning prose included the passage: "Meanwhile her ears were filled with the sound of a soft but frantic gasping and it was some time before she identified it as her own."

The character then says: "This is so wonderful I feel I might disintegrate, I might break into a million fragments."

BBC TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh was on hand to accept a runner-up prize for his carefully cultivated prose. He told guests at London's Naval and Military Club: "In the face of stiff opposition I'm glad I came.

"I am delighted to be in the company of Julian Barnes and Sebastian Faulks with my first novel, Mr MacGregor."

He said in his part of Yorkshire sex "is what posh people get their coal in".

Waugh said the Bad Sex Awards were becoming "the most important literary event in the country".

Also shortlisted were contributions from actor Richard E Grant, US prosecutor Kenneth Starr for the Starr Report and former Home Secretary, Lord Hurd, who this year chaired the judging panel of the Booker Prize.