Rebel Wilson isn’t the only one who lost her virginity in her thirties

Not everybody has to lose their virginity as a teenager.” So says Rebel Wilson in her recently released memoir, Rebel Rising. Among the many headline-grabbing lines to come out of the book, perhaps the one that sparked the biggest furore was the revelation that the Pitch Perfect actor didn’t have sex for the first time until she was 35.

Referring to herself as a “late bloomer”, Wilson, now 44, said she was sharing her experience in the hope of normalising the notion of losing your virginity later in life. “People can wait till they’re ready or wait till they’re a bit more mature,” she said. “And I think that could be a positive message. You obviously don’t have to wait until you’re in your thirties like me, but you shouldn’t feel pressure as a young person.”

Despite culture’s best efforts to convince us that everyone is at it like rabbits, Wilson isn’t alone. A revealed that 5 per cent of Britons – 4 per cent of women and 6 per cent of men who were willing to give an answer – aged 25 or older were yet to. Among those aged 30 to 34, the number of women who reported never having had heterosexual intercourse was 11.9 per cent, while this figure was 12.7 per cent for men.