A new fad is sweeping England , and it comes about as the institution of marriage falls in popularity. Because fewer couples are opting to get wed it consequently means that there are fewer opportunities to indulge in wife swapping and this is proved by the membership numbers of the UK ’s Confederation of Wife Swapping Societies which have fallen by 52% since 1984.

With this healthy pursuit about to disappear from the social scene it fell to one man to rescue the pastime from oblivion, and his name is Hiram Binge.

“The idea of wife swapping appealed to me,” he said yesterday, “but as I was unmarried, I couldn’t participate. Most clubs refuse to accept unmarried guys as associate members even for a quick look. So I came up with the idea of aunt swapping to compensate for my lack in the marital department. The idea is that young guys, rather than swapping wives they don’t have, swap aunts which they do have. So, I frequently swap my Aunt Hilda for my friend Stan’s Aunt Betty. What is done during the swap is strictly up to the participants. Hilda likes to give Stan tea and cream cakes and discuss embroidery, but Betty drags me upstairs the minute I step into her house.”

The scheme has other benefits which Binge is well aware of. “For instance, with western society one is generally only allowed one wife, whereas one can have many aunts. This means that you have a greater variety to offer your swap partner and if he has many aunts you could have a multitude of combinations, all offering the potential for lots of fun.”

Binge accepts that many aunts will not always be immediately desirable to romantically inclined young men. “Some of them will be past the Yummy Mummy stage and perhaps even being MILFs, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in an aunty. Stan really enjoys his cream cakes and is learning a lot about embroidery, especially double stitch.”

The changes in society which have seen the collapse of the nuclear family mean that aunt swapping is likely to take off in a big way and may ultimately replace wife swapping as the hobby of choice for middle class England , but Binge has plans to accommodate this.

“We hope to form reciprocal arrangements with wife swapping clubs and put arrangements in place where one can swap an aunt for a wife and I already have my eye on Mrs Tania Bottomley of the Little Puddlebury Society who is a bit of a raver. It would mean, in the long run, that a young chap could set out on his swapping career by offering his aunts and later, once he had a lady wife of his own, he could throw her into the pot. In this way there would be a natural progression in swapping activities. It might be the only way to ensure the survival of this ancient sexual practice. Our heritage is important and we must retain it. The couples of England have been swapping since the days of Henry VIII and we shouldn’t let it die just because people aren’t getting married. It is healthy, enjoyable and allows the shy or reticent to meet a much wider range of people than they would if they joined a book club.”