1. Tracey Cox - you have a background in psychology and used to write for Cosmo - what inspired your move into the world of sex?

I think you have to blame my sister actually. My big sister works for family planning in Australia, and even when really, really small she was constantly giving me all these pamphlets to read, like how to put on a condom or how not to get pregnant, because she was constantly working with young girls who'd either got pregnant or got an STD or something like that, so she was absolutely paranoid that I was going to end up in the same situation. So I suppose I got quite used to sex and talking about sex at a very early age and because of what my big sister did, lots of the kids at school would say things like: "ooh can you ask your big sister about…" so I'd go and ask her the stuff that the others wanted to know. I guess I grew up with a healthy respect for sex and no embarrassment talking about it. I then went into psychology, and my other love is writing and so following my degree, I wasn't sure which to go [with], when suddenly it came to me. The beauty of what I do now is that it combines writing and psychology and sex, which are my three favorite topics.

2. Supersex has been hailed as "the sex manual for the new millennium". The tone and style of the book seems a lot sassier than other sexual guides on the market. How did you realize that there was a market for such a manual?

I think we're a lot more relaxed about sex now than we ever have been, and I've always thought that the problem in the sex book market was that you had the very credible, authoritative, sort of quite goody-goody books that were quite medical, and then on the other end the scale you had the quite, I don't know, slightly grubby, slightly sleazy books and there was nothing really in between. I think whenever people start talking about sex they either get very "nudge nudge, wink wink", or they go to the other extreme and start talking like they're speaking from a medical textbook, and no one really seemed to do sex with a sense of humor. If you take a look at the success of Sex & the City, it talks about the stuff that we all really talk about in real life, but no one ever says in public. I wanted to write a book that really had the humor, 'cos sex is funny sometimes. I mean - we should be laughing about it, it's not serious. So my book has a sense of humor which makes people feel less embarrassed - it's a bit of a laugh - but also it deals with all the topics that the other books don't and in a way that isn't embarrassing.

3. What makes your book different from other titles such as Dr. Alex Comfort's Joy of Sex?

The Joy of Sex I think was the first amazing sex book ever to be written and I think it will always be up there at least for the next 20 years in the top 5 must-have sex books. It's different from mine, yet similar in a lot of ways because the Joy of Sex has got a real personality; he's not scared to say the things that we all sometime think, like to question what's wrong and what's right. Alex comes across like he's giving you the information, but you also get a sense of the person behind it.

4. The book is very much intended for both sexes. As a female author, I would imagine it was easier for you to get women to be more candid than men. Or did you find both sexes equally forthcoming?

I think you can't really divide it like that, I think that if you're talking to somebody about sex, and they're not embarrassed about it and they realize they're not judged, then most people open up and start talking very honestly about sex - whether they be a man or a woman. In fact, I think probably the opposite was true. I found that the fact that I was being nonjudgmental, I actually found that men opened up more as they realized they could get some answers to their questions. Women, on the other hand, talk sex all the time, you know: we're the ones that go out with a guy, sleep with him and then the minute he's gone and hardly out the door, we're on the phone to our girlfriends giving them all the details. This is something that men don't do as much… they're not as likely to be down the pub and say something like "I had an erection problem, what do you think that means?" Men don't talk about sex like that, so as I said, the fact that they're in a situation where they can and where they can get some answers to things that have bothered, then they completely open up.

5. How is Supersex intended for both men and women?

I very much wanted Supersex to be for men and women because I think that people write sex books for women; as if to assume that men aren't going to read sex books. The problem is that when a guy does pick up a sex book, it's so obviously written for a woman and it's full of female oriented messages, like "men should make love like women", that I think it puts them off. Supersex is very much a couples book - you can pick it up, and it's saying "these are the slight differences, let's work together"… so it is just as much for men as it is for women.

6. Do you believe that the sixties really was a sexual revolution for both sexes, or do you believe that in the 21st century, the majority of us have still have sexual hang-ups? You have included a chapter in your book entitled 'This is really embarrassing", which covers topics that wouldn't normally be discussed...

I think the thing is, it doesn't really matter whether you were born in the 60's or the year 2000. You know, we're always probably going to have sex hang-ups and problems with communicating about it, because sex is something that you do in private, that you don't do in public, so therefore you can't see where you're going wrong because you've got nothing to compare it to. And the fact is, most people aren't comfortable talking about sex. So if you can't talk about it and you can't see it, how are you going to know where you're going wrong? I think that whole chapter about embarrassing sex questions is all about the stuff that you don't ask your best friend even for fear that they will judge you, so I think there'll always be a need for chapters like that in any sex book, sex books written now, or you know in forty years' time or whatever.

7. What are your thoughts on the Kama Sutra?

I think the Kama Sutra is an amazing book. The thing that people don't realize about the Kama Sutra is that the sex bit is actually a very, very small part of it, and if you talk to Anne Hooper who's just written a book about the Kama Sutra, it's actually all about a whole way of living and basically it's a whole attitude thing. The sex is only a small part of the book… but of course that's what we all focus on, isn't it?! I personally am not really into writing about the Kama Sutra and Tantric sex because I actually think that in a time when most of us don't have very much time, we're all so busy, what's more applicable is quick-fix solutions. The Kama Sutra and Tantric sex both rely on exploration and lots and lots of foreplay before you even get to the real foreplay! It's fantastic if you've got the time and the energy, you know, and the kind of relationship that's going to sustain it, as the results are extraordinary; but I think that most people don't have the time, probably don't have the patience.

8. You deem the Jessica Rabbit vibrator "the world's favorite vibrator". It certainly seems to have had the most publicity! Which other sex toys come highly recommended?!

I voted Jessica the favorite because she was the only vibrator in the whole lot that I had to pick from. We joke about vibrators all the time, but in fact they are a lifeline for a lot of women… you know, if someone comes to me and says, "I can't have an orgasm," the first thing you do is give them a vibrator and send them off because you basically -- the whole point of a vibrator is that you just put it anywhere near you, and most women do have an orgasm. And then if they know what they're aiming for it's a lot easier to sort of say, ok, this is the sensation, here you are, this is how you're going to get it minus the vibrator. The thing about sex toys and vibrators is that as time goes on they are changing. Traditionally they were designed by men, hence you had vibrators that were, like this big penis-shaped thing which was extremely loud and the vibrations that would shake the whole foundation of a building! The new sex toys aren't shaped like penises because most women don't insert vibrators, they actually just hold them against the clitoris. They're quiet, you know the vibrations are very, like, gentle, so it's very interesting that the new sex aids designed by women for women are so completely different. I'm all for sex toys, I'm actually up for anything that a couple can do together that's not harming anyone. However, I'm really anti other bodies in the bed. I think you get into all sorts of trouble when you start trying to spice up by introducing a third person or other people, but I think sex toys are fun. A lot of them are simply for the novelty factor and the fact that it's a bit naughty and all that. Let's face it, a lot of them don't work, but I think that they're a great fun thing to try.

9. You base a fair proportion of the book on your personal experience - in one chapter you describe your experience of a very large penis - and a very small one! Has it ever worried your lovers that they might end up as examples in print?!

I think there's two questions in there. The first one is why would I write something like that about the, um, large penis versus the small penis, which I think is quite funny actually. The reason I wrote that was because the whole moral of that tale was about the common perception "ooh, the big penis is going to be better than the small penis". In actual fact, the guy with the big penis was the worst lover I've ever had in my entire life because he just thought - oh, this is enough, to even look at it was meant to be enough to satisfy me. The guy who wasn't so blessed actually had to develop the skills, i.e. like love making skills, oral sex skills, as he knew he couldn't rely so much on his penis and so he had to become a really good lover. I think we are so obsessed with size, you know, men are completely obsessed with size, and they're also obsessed with erections… so that was why I wrote about the large versus small penis to try and reassure people that it's not about your body parts. People don't fall in love with body bits; they fall in love with the person that they're attached to. And the fact is, what you were blessed with does not have any bearing on what sort of lover you are. It's all about getting in touch with your partner, giving to your partner, learning to take pleasure as well, learning skills, talking, finding out what they want… it's got absolutely nothing to do with penis size which is why I put that story in there. As for "are my lovers worried about ending up in print?" Um… yes they probably are. I think I'm possibly a little frightening to go out with, simply because they're worried that I know too much about them, more so than they know about their own bodies perhaps, and also they do fear that that I'm going to write about them in books or columns or whatever else I do. The fact is I've never ever, ever betrayed a confidence or written about somebody who didn't want to be written about. Most of the people who know me -- my family and my best friends -- can't identify who these people are in the books and they know who I've been out with and they know everybody I'm talking about, so what I do is I take the experience and I disguise it enough to protect that person so they won't even know if they're reading it. So, in a sense, their fears are unfounded.

10. And finally, what are your top 5 tips for incredible sex?

I hate questions like this - my five top tips would be:

• Stop being so orgasm-orientated, because I think everybody gets into bed and their goal is to have an orgasm per person at the end of the session. You're better off just getting into bed and you know, having fun, and having a laugh and exploring all the sensations and, if you take away that pressure of an orgasm you actually have a lot better time in bed, because it's all about that whole happiness and that it is a means of traveling, not a destination - and sex is exactly the same.
• I also think that we should learn to not be so serious about sex. I think we treat it in either a mocking way or we get all upset if the slightest thing goes wrong. I think the more you laugh in bed the better sex you're going to have.
• Talk about sex. It's a really, really important tip to give, but it's the most important of all. If you can talk to your partner about sex, you've basically solved something like 90% of the sex problems you might experience. It's when people shut up about it and don't say what they need or what they want, that you get problems.
• The other thing I would say is keep having sex, even if you don't really feel like it because what happens is, the more sex you have, the more sex you want and you build up a nice little craving cycle - if you always have a chocolate at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the next day and the next day your body's going "hang on, it's 3 o'clock, I feel like a chocolate because I'm used to getting that reward." So the more sex you have, the more orgasms you have, the more your body goes "ooh hang on, we haven't had sex today," and it sort of taps you on the shoulder and says, "how about it?" It's quite a good idea that if you do go through a natural waning period, maybe you're working too hard or you haven't seen each other, to actually make the effort and start making love because sometimes it can make you remember "oh that's right, I'd forgotten how good that was" and again you get back into that cycle. The more sex you have, the more sex you want, and the happier you'll be as a couple.
• I think the way to keep sex alive and happening with the same partner is to change one thing every single time you have sex. It could be something as simple as changing rooms or swapping around so that your head and feet are at different ends of the bed, changing what you smell like, different perfume, burning candles, changing the music, having no music sometimes, lights completely off, one light on - if you just change one thing you can keep the buzz happening. That's all it needs.