Vince Cable spared blushes at Bad Sex Awards as judge resists calls for him to be on the shortlist

Sir Vince Cable has managed to avoid an appearance on the “Bad Sex Award” shortlist despite multiple nominations, the judge has revealed.

The Liberal Democrat leader’s debut thriller, Open Arms, tells the story of the blossoming love affair between a British politician and the heir to an Indian arms manufacturer.

But despite having been variously described as “racy” and full of  “sex and political intrigue,” the MP's sex scenes were considered “very discreet” by the Literary Review’s notorious awards.

Judge Frank Brinkley noted the wealth of nominations the novel attracted but said “it does not qualify simply because its author is a Member of Parliament”.

Sir Vince admitted earlier this year that he had been careful to try and avoid featuring on the dreaded shortlist, when he said of the thriller: “It is not actually about sex – the sex is very discreet, it is not going to win the bad sex award.”

Brinkley said the magazine had noted an improvement in the sex scenes in this year’s fiction, suggesting that authors were less likely to throw one in just for the sake of it.

"Maybe publishers aren’t pushing for it in the way that ‘sex sells’ was used as a prompt 15 years ago,” he told the Guardian. “All to the good.”

The awards were established “to draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction” and in previous years, the dubious title has been awarded to authors including Morrissey and Norman Mailer

This year, among the nominees are bestseller Wilbur Smith for War Cry, co-written with David Churchill and Laurent Binet for a passage in The Seventh Function of Language.

The Literary Review said the prize was not intended to cover expressly pornographic literature, meaning that although Monique Roffey’s The Tryst was “heavily nominated”, it was not eligible.