Got myself a crying, walking,sleeping, talking living doll  – as Cliff Richard used to sing in 1959 when we all still thought he would fall for one from those shoals of frenzied teenage girls who used to throw themselves at him.

Well, thanks to the boundless virtuosity of our technologists, Sir Cliff could now have his wish: a living doll, and especially the talking bit. The sex-boffins have created – no, that’s not right – manufactured – a living doll and they are promoting its distribution with the following exciting sales pitch:

“She offers all the action you could require and small talk too.”

Perhaps it would put some users off if she talked of small things during her ministrations?

I’m intrigued and might be tempted to buy one. But first I would want to know what the little rubber darling is going to talk to me about. It would have to be something interesting or I would only drop off, so to speak. Let me tell you my ideal…

I should like a rubber girl who would pour me a glass of Chablis and give me a ten minutes’ going over on the transcendental analytic – followed by chapter three of Grundlegung Zur Metaphysik der Sitten – by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Then I should like her to pour me a second glass and, with her other hand, flick through the pages of my King James Bible and read to me from the Old Testament. All those begats might prove to be an encouragement.

She comes with three speeds: quickie, standard (American regular) and tantric – which lasts for hours and is meant to be a spiritual as well as a carnal experience. So, when you push her (belly) button and turn it to tantric, she speaks gnomic and mystical paradoxes and texts such as “I hear the sound of one rubber hand clapping” from the classic Zen and the Uses of Latex by the Dolly Lama.

She also comes with the warning that the mystical ecstasies of the tantric masters have to be worked up to slowly. You have to start at the bottom. The manual recommends A Table of Kindred and Affinity which, as we all learned in our Confirmation classes, is found in The Book of Common Prayer (1662)

Several passages are offered but beginners are advised not to start with A man may not marry his wife’s father’s mother.

For heightened results you can programme her to repeat that sentence up to – but not more than – 1379 times.

She never gets a headache but you might if you hit the wrong programme and, just as you begin on your third glass of Chablis, she starts reciting the Labour Manifesto.