SUE JOHANSON Talk show host finds sex funny

The aging expert recently appeared on David Letterman's show.
By LIBBY COPELAND
WASHINGTON POST
NEW YORK -- If you are channel-surfing late some night through your higher cable channels, you may come across a woman who looks rather like an elderly nun, thrusting a model of a male sex organ into her fist. Her name is Sue Johanson and she is very strange.
Johanson hosts a live call-in show on the Oxygen network in which she answers sex questions, rates sex toys and offers historical sex trivia. She is married with grandchildren, owns a cottage north of Toronto, sews her own clothes and curtains, and sometimes fashions homemade sex toys.
On "Talk Sex With Sue Johanson," the 70-ish host takes calls from all manner of people -- pregnant women, insecure men, obese women with obese husbands. She offers medical advice, allays concerns and exhorts her viewers to go out and try new techniques with the relentless enthusiasm of a phys-ed teacher.
"It's going to feel strange at first, but you won't die!" she advises a woman who has queried about an unorthodox sexual position.
Third season in U.S.
Johanson has been on the air in Canada since 1996, and on Sunday she started the third season of her U.S. show. She was in New York recently to appear on "Late Show With David Letterman," during which she teased the host about his sex life and discussed his baby son's genitalia at some length. She'd sewn a cute black skirt especially for the occasion. Unfortunately for viewers, Johanson was not as playful as she had been in a 2003 appearance on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," during which she strapped a sex toy to her chin and thrust a vibrator into Tom Selleck's mustache.
Johanson had lunch beforehand at a place called Redeye Grill in midtown. As a general matter, Johanson delights in discussing bodily functions of all sorts. She made three fart references during lunch. She particularly enjoys those calls she gets on her show regarding farts during sex.
"Sex is funny," she says. "Think of the positions you get into."
Career history
A nurse who lives most of the year in Toronto proper, and broadcasts from there as well, Johanson has been lecturing about sex for nearly 35 years. She has written books and lectured extensively at high schools and colleges across Canada.
For almost 30 years, she ran a free birth-control clinic that she'd founded at a Toronto high school. She is adamant about the use of condoms and answers a lot of worst-case-scenario questions from her "Talk Sex" viewers. ("You can get gonorrhea in the back of your throat," she tells one guy.) Before and after commercials, Johanson's show -- which airs at 11 p.m. Sunday and in reruns the rest of the week -- gives phone numbers for HIV help hotlines and carries safe-sex reminders such as "Cover Mr. Twitchy, or you'll wind up itchy!"
But most of the time, Johanson -- a gray-haired woman who wears baggy clothes and round glasses -- adopts the gung-ho attitude of a Girl Scout leader.
She jams sex toys into her hand to show how they should be used, or drops them and laughs as they hum and bounce across her desk. She rubs strawberry warming massage oil on her hand. She uses articulated wooden dolls to demonstrate sexual positions. She pretends to have an orgasm, closing her eyes and gripping the desk.
On one occasion, Johanson promises that in the next episode, she'll be showing off homemade sex toys:
"You will never look at an electric toothbrush the same way again!"