IT’S THAT TIME of year again: when innocent readers cringe in their office chairs, and titillation-seekers throw up their hands in rage and frustration.

Yes, the nominees for the Bad Sex Awards 2012 have been announced.

Surprisingly perhaps, there’s no mention of the year’s biggest smutbook Fifty Shades of Grey, which brought us gems like:

Suddenly, I’m sliding effortlessly up the piano, gliding on satin, and he’s following me up there.

But anyway. The Literary Review, which runs the awards every year, says this:

The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it. The prize is not intended to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature.

They’ve also been tweeting extracts from the worst offenders:

…which we can only assume is from a novel about a flower arranging hobbyist.

So what did they come up with? Drum roll please… here are the nominees.

(WARNING: Contains very explicit language which may put you off all between-the-sheets activity forever.)