A lot of people might have used some cheap sex toys to supplement their love life over the years, but they were certainly not in evidence at the world's largest adult industry trade fair this week. Held in Las Vegas, where else, the Adult Entertainment Expo provided a showcase for the biggest and best in global erotica.

Everything was available including highly advanced robots which could mimic human emotions. These are truly remarkable contraptions. Not only are they more life like than the kind of blow up dolls most people think about, but they can be programmed to like whatever you want them too: football, cricket... tea. You name it the world is your oyster.

So what's a manufacturer of cheap sex toys to do. Even this shady industry may well be progressing beyond him as his clients take to space age technology in order to fulfil their every desires. It's a difficult problem and asks a number of serious questions about the mental health of our species as a whole. Undeniably the sophistication of products such as these shows the adult industry is becoming more mainstream than ever before. The mere fact that we're prepared to devote so much effort into this business suggests something may well be profoundly wrong at a pretty basic stage.

Everywhere you look it's becoming part and parcel of the mainstream. No highstreet is complete without a shop selling cheap sex toys and people no longer feel embarrassed to go in for a browse. As a child I remember being dragged round the shop by my Mum and wondering if there was actually a shop anywhere in the world into which she would not go? Thank god I don't have to go through the same experience today.

Conservatives will no doubt bemoan this as a sign of the ongoing moral decline of our society. You can imagine the Pope spouting forth some choice phrases although how he knows so much about things like this is open to interpretation.

However, let's celebrate the good side of this commercialisation of the adult industry. No longer do people have to slink away to questionable shops in dark street corners to get their cheap thrills. No longer do they have to suffer the danger of inadequate cheap sex toys. What these were I do not know - perhaps they involved splinters. So let's hear it for the adult entertainment industry and all those people who can look at the world with pride as the saunter out of those little darkened shops.