Food critic tops in tastelessness

It was the shower hose that clinched it.

A passage describing a male character’s genitalia as “leaping around like a shower hose dropped in an empty bath” helped British food critic Giles Coren win the 13th annual Bad Sex in Fiction award Thursday for his debut novel, “Winkler.”

The prize, presented by Britain’s Literary Review magazine, aims to “draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel.”

Coren beat heavyweight competition, including Salman Rushdie’s “Shalimar the Clown,” John Updike’s “Villages” and Paul Theroux’s “Blinding Light.”

Winners receive a statuette and a bottle of champagne -- but only if they show up to the ceremony in person. Last year’s winner, Tom Wolfe, chose not to.