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British Porn

Charlie Brown aka Walter Bartkoski, a German-Pole prisoner of WWII who moved to London, worked as a steward on many cross-Channel ferries smuggling porn. "He always wore a little leather hat," Mike Freeman, fellow London pioneer, told the authors of the 1988 book Porn Gold. "He used to phone me from Germany and if there was a good-selling line, he used to order them in batches. They were twenty-minute 8mm prints in proper boxes with photographs on the outside. He used to get the stuff through Calais, somehow."

Beginning in 1966, Freeman started shooting 16mm loops in color. "I used to make them in London with professional models… The sound was over-dubbed later. I had three labels at that time: Venus, Climax and Action. I supplied all the shops in the West End as well as exporting to Scandinavia and Europe through Walter." (PORN GOLD)

Bartkoswki eventually settled in Germany, founding his own company, Starlight Films which was consolidated into Tabu Films.

Ivor Cooke made numerous explicit loops in London in the '60s, including Pussy Galore (not related to the David Friedman film), First Audition, End of Term and 100% Lust which supposedly features a pre-Profumo Christine Keeler doing hardcore.

Known as Britain's first blue millionaire, Evan Philips made 8mm loops in London from 1965. In 1973 he was arrested and jailed for 18 months for possessing obscenity. Upon release in 1975, at age 33, he committed suicide.

In 1966, Mike Freeman began serving 18 months for producing obscenity. Back in jail in 1969, he got in a fight for his life. "I fell out with some people who sent a hit man to kill me. But I got him before he got me." Though a judge sentenced him to life in prison for murder, he eventually got out in 1980.

Freeman then exploited a temporary confusion over whether the Obscene Publications Act applied to video. Caballero's Swedish Erotica series sold widely throughout Britain at the time. Uli Rotermund of the Beate Uhse organization in Germany says they sold 10,000 video cassettes of one title alone between 1979 and 1983.

Mike made hardcore tapes and placed ads looking for performers. Paula Meadows answered one. Freeman met her and her boyfriend Frank Russell, an elderly Irish writer. "We were smoking a joint and talking about what she would do in the film. She said she liked to be a slave and have men to tell her what to do. So I told her to lift up her skirt. To my amazement, she did, and while this funny old geezer [Russell] was still sitting in the corner of the room and watching, she knelt in front of me and started to suck me off. A girlfriend of hers joined in. She looked up at me and said, 'I'm a phallus worshipper.' I thought, get worshipping that, girl."

Russell wrote the initial script. Says Meadows, "It was a beautiful story based on something I'd been through. We devised a story and circulated it to all the members of the cast."

On the first morning of the shoot, Meadows turned up with the script under her arm. "I found out that nobody had even bothered to open the cover of it. Even the director [Freeman] hadn't. The first thing Mike did was light up a joint, start smoking and say, 'Ok, let's get into all this… What's the first scene? And where are we doing all this?' He was an artist and a painter and he appreciated the visuals of it, but had no idea what it was all about…" (Porn Gold)

The video was eventually finished and released as Truth or Dare.

In 1982 Paula Meadows heard a knock on her door. "It was the police. The Vice Squad had appeared. They'd arrested Mike and they were just talking to everybody, to find out who his partner was. They weren't interested in us after they'd talked to us for a few minutes. They realized we weren't involved with him on the business side. We were just acting in the film. They'd assumed that someone else was involved, that someone else had put the money up. I don't know whether they ever found him. He was a strange secret partner." (Porn Gold)

Mike's strange secret partner was probably the British government. Needing funds, he'd applied to the Department of Trade and Industry for a loan. Though he was probably vague about the details of his movies, Mike got the money.

John Lindsay served as cameraman on Derek Ford's 1969 film The Wife Swappers before turning hardcore. Acquitted at Birmingham Court in 1975 for making 'obscene' films, he was jailed in London in 1983 for showing them.

Most of Britain's major cities showed hardcore films like Deep Throat from 1975 to 1986, and adult videotapes openly advertised in magazines.

Two British porn entrepreneurs found a way to exhibit hardcore films through forming private clubs, which were outside the British Board of Film Censors and the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. John Lindsey ran the Taboo chain and David Waterfield the Exxon Cinema Club. Both advertised that they showed hardcore movies and they lived up their promises. Their clients had to wait an obligatory hour for their applications 'to be processed.'

Then came a crackdown under the Conservative government.

Hardcore, in theory and usually in practice, has always been illegal in Britain. Most of the blue movies shown at stag parties before the Second World War were smuggled in. A few amateurs began turning out stags in the late '40s, but not until the '60s did English pros take over.

It is not illegal to own hardcore in Britain, but it is illegal to make it, import it or sell it.

"In darkest Britain, the only form of sexual entertainment generally available has been of the soft core variety," writes David McGillivray in his 1992 book Doing Rude Things, "but for nearly 25 years it just about drove the populace to distraction. While a minority of moralists cursed the sex film as the harbinger of a tidal wave of filth, the majority of the male population and a good percentage of curious females turned it into the most lucrative speculation the British film industry has ever enjoyed.

"It is improbable that Britain will ever find a more profitable genre of film and, although the sex film seems to count for nothing in the scheme of things, the last and most devastating downswing in British film production coincided with the cessation of the sex film business at the end of the Seventies.

"No matter what yardstick one uses - even for example, low budget production in general - sex films, particularly the British ones, were extremely poor. They were characterised by inane writing, hack direction, amateurish performances, technical inadequacy and a consequent deficiency of entertainment value."

Born in 1929, Paul Raymond presides over a $120 million softporn empire. Raised a strict Roman Catholic in Liverpool, he gained fame in 1958 for opening Raymond's Revuebar, a strip club in the notorious district of Soho in London. In 1990, an international edition of Time magazine said that the onslaught of sex shops and nude bars in the area threatened others businesses, because the traffickers in flesh like Raymond were willing to pay five times the rent of previous tenants.

Paul is unapologetic. He says that if he went to confession, which he almost never does anymore, "I don't know what I'd have to confess."

Raymond's daughter Debbie, born in 1959, seems to be his heir apparent. During the 1980s, Paul divorced his wife of 21 years after a widely publicized affair with a stripper. He's estranged from his son.

The more down market the British sex magazine, the more likely it is to feature pages of "reader's letters" about their sexual adventures, writes the Independent on Sunday in 1994. "Shafts, poles, orbs, moons, bloves, pegs, tufts, and clefts tend to play a huge part in these screeds. The unwary might imagine they had mistakenly bought Scaffolding Weekly or an astronomy…mag. There is also a juddering, throbbing, shuddering and screaming on a near-seismic level. If half the stories were true, it would be impossible to go out for a pint of milk or a jog in the park without falling over a compromised couple…"

"What British users want is the girl next door," says David McGillivray. "Women in porn mags are fantasy figures but we don't like the Californian chocolate box images. Pamela Anderson is popular, but she's not a serious fantasy - she's not available. But Doreen from Dorking just might be."

Michael Goss publishes "quality erotic literature." "One of the earliest pornographers was the Earl of Rochester during the Restoration - though one generation's pornography is another generation's literature. Look at Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, which is now considered a literary classic. Porn was first published for profit around the turn of the 18th Century - novels, stories… It was from around 1830 that most of the porn that is any good starts to appear. In those days it was a very gentlemanly pursuit - most people were illiterate, so it was written, published and distributed by the aristocracy. I think most gentlemen had a locked cabinet of beautiful leather bound volumes…

"There are two levels of consumer. Those who prefer books tend to be well-spoken and well-educated. But top-shelf mags and videos appeal to the lowest common denominator."

Sources: Porn Gold by David Hebditch and Nick Anning. London. Faber & Faber. 1988.

Doing Rude Things by David McGillivray. London. Sun Tavern Fields. 1992.

"Where There's Muck," Cream, Winter, 1998, p. 59-62.

Guardian, 1/13/97

IN THE murky world of Britain's top-shelf magazines, a very dirty war is going on. The battle is being waged by a fascinatingly louche cast list of characters: millionaire porn barons, Sun page three girls, ex-criminals with modishly short haircuts, smooth amoral marketing men and hardcore photographers with improbable names like Klatt and Jansky. Nelson Mandela's former secretary, who was summarily fired after appearing naked in the South African edition of Hustler, has a cameo role. So does the Duchess of York, who last year turned down a lucrative request to bare all by the British edition of Hustler. Sitting on the sidelines is Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, armed with an obscenity law regarded privately as a "mess." As the millennium approaches, the industry waits with interest to see which of its products still "deprave and corrupt."

At stake is an industry worth an estimated pounds 100 million a year. The circulation battle between the skin trade's leading titles is more vicious - much more vicious - than the genteel sales skirmishing between respectable newspapers. Conventional market research reveals that nobody in Britain reads pornographic magazines and yet every month some 500,000 copies of the five leading market titles - Penthouse, Knave, Fiesta, Club and Hustler - surreptitiously vanish from top shelves. Newsagents testify that some of the people who buy them are women. Within this lurid subculture, there are also niche magazines (Big and Fat, Forty Plus) which sell around 10,000 copies a month.

It is a highly profitable industry. Overheads are low, there is little editorial content - no journalists to pay, and few adverts. Models who subject themselves to the kind of gynaecological acrobatics demanded by magazines like Hustler receive an average of pounds 300 for their trouble. Photographers earn more from a day's shoot - between pounds 1,000 and pounds 2,000. But most of the cover-price, which can be as high as pounds 3.95, is profit. And then there are lucrative sidelines - sex videos, explicit chat-lines and mail order businesses which offer a variety of bizarre products and sex aids (strangely including blow-up milkmaid dolls).

Over the past year the two leading British titles - Hustler and Penthouse - have fallen out, and fallen out big. The first shot in this latterday porn war was fired when James Brown, a 28-year-old minder of millionaire publisher Richard Desmond, defected from Penthouse to Hustler. Desmond, chairman of Northern and Shell which publishes Penthouse in the UK under licence, had hired Brown after he allegedly got into a little difficulty with the American mafia. (Legend has it that when Desmond despatched a minion, Philip Bailey, to New York, Bailey made the mistake of getting into the wrong stretch limo. He was beaten senseless with a cattle prod, and thrown out of a moving car.) As a result, Desmond got paranoid - and hired Brown, a burly, ginger-haired former con who had completed five years at Her Majesty's Pleasure for firearms offences. Brown soon became close to his master and became involved in the publishing arm of Desmond's vast empire.

Impatient for promotion, Brown then defected to JT publishing, a company run by the South African porn magnate Joe Theron. Theron had launched a British version of the magazine Hustler back in February 1994 in direct competition with Penthouse. Initially, its circulation reached 60,000 a month. But it fell back to 20,000 when Menzies and WH Smith refused to stock the title after its editor - responding to evermore graphic imports from America - decided to go hardcore.

Desmond fired back by complaining to trading standards about American sex videos advertised by JT publications. A trading standards officer and three policemen duly searched the firm's offices in Clerkenwell, central London, but left empty-handed.

Piqued, Hustler came out guns blazing. In December 1995 it ran a feature in which it branded Desmond "Arsehole of the Month" and accused him in ornate scatological prose of "vindictiveness and professional jealousy." Just in case he missed the point, the article was flyposted outside Desmond's gleaming Canary Wharf office in the dead of night by persons unknown.

But then last February Hustler suffered a setback of its own. Customs officials seized a shipment of videos and magazines (as well as entirely blameless titles, including Discovering Opera and Plant Magic) and arrested Stuart Cayley, a junior editorial assistant who had been sent along to collect them. Five officers then raided the offices of Hustler UK and arrested Brown and secretary Jennifer Cayley. Theron then leapt on a plane from South Africa to try and negotiate their release, but was himself arrested soon after arriving in London. Brown, Stuart Cayley, and Theron were duly charged with importing obscene material in the form of videos. They have pleaded not guilty and have hired a leading QC to defend them at Southwark Crown Court in March.

The magazine's lucrative video business was crippled by the raid. Showing lightning cunning, Desmond then moved into the gap in the market and ran adverts for Dutch blue movies in Penthouse, a title less explicit than Hustler which still enjoys distribution arrangements with mainstream retailers.

But events were to overtake him too. General Media, the US owner of Penthouse which issues licences to other distributors worldwide, decided to terminate its agreement with Desmond. This month's issue is the last to bear his imprimatur. Both parties refuse to discuss why the licence was revoked, but sources at Northern and Shell point out that the firm still publishes another General Media porn title, Forum, and say relations between the two companies remain friendly.

Scenting blood, Hustler is now gearing itself up for a knockout strike. Next month it relaunches as two separate titles - Hustler, a softer, toned-down version of the magazine for mainstream distribution, and Hustler Gold, the old hardcore mag for the unblanching, top-shelf connoisseur. The revamped Hustler will boast more British models, including two Sun page three girls who have decided to reveal all.

Soho Sex

Peter Hayes writes from England, 2/00:

Set slap bang in the middle of London, Soho has long been synonymous with prostitution and vice in general. Historical records show that Soho was noted for its prostitution as far back as the 17th Century. It has never been totally clear why this is, although it's location near to London's main shopping street (Oxford St), West End theatres and the Westminster Parliament are probably three of the principle reasons.

However it would be unfair to say this is (or was) the only place of prostitution and vice in London. Different areas had (and have) a different clientele from the upmarket hostels of Chelsea (in the west) to the very down market areas such as Whitechapel (in the east.) The former was made famous by being the haunt of Jack the Ripper and his murder unfortunate victims.

One of the first ever print-based pornographers (circa 1910) was a guy known as "John the Dustman" who got his hands on an early century printing press and used it to print dirty books (usually crude translations of French porn trash) for his friends. Their popularity and novelty sold out several print runs and he soon left his dustcart behind. Predictably he was arrested and imprisoned (for public indecency reasons, naturally), although continued his craft after leaving prison and was not re-arrested.

Since the birth of the printing press advertising for brothels and sexual services was difficult and most frank and open guides where prosecuted under laws referring to obscenity and offending public morals - an example was the infamous "London Guide" which openly ranked prostitutes for their cleanliness, demeanour and even the tightness of their vaginas!

Brothels mostly operated via a word of mouth system, but some ventured in to underground print advertising making use of double entrepreneurs like "French maid service," "very big chest for sale", or more commonly "French lessons." (The French being seen at the time as being the most sexually open - the case being true right up until the late 1960's when the term "Swedish" took over. Presumably due to the relaxation of obscenity laws in that part of the world and propaganda as to the Swedes sexual appetites.) Naturally this resulted in some confusion with those unable to read the secret codes!

This undoubtedly explains, in part, the British sense of humour (Benny Hill being the most obvious) and why so much of the UK (soft-core) film industry has used humour (and innuendo) to sweeten the sex pill. The most famous being the unredeemably lame "Carry On" series, which trundled on through 30 odd films.

"Art dealers" specialising in "exotic prints" and "antique books" has long been a part of London life. Once again the area surrounding Oxford Street (not all of it strictly Soho) were (and again are) the favourite location. Their prices and uppercrust clientele left them unchallenged by the forces of law and order. Most these were not for private use but hung on the walls of "smoking rooms" and "gentlemen's (only) clubs" - which only a few - such as the "Groucho" (aimed at show biz figures and journalists) survive.

Some of the braver dealers sold (under the counter) photographs imported from Paris featuring (often overweight) prostitutes in various states of undress. Today these are collectors items as there is a flourishing trade in porn nostalgia.

Few photos showed intercourse and some even shied away from full frontal nudity. Spanking often sat in for sexual intercourse. These images where generally expensive and often held back for known and trusted customers.

Rather like the famous "bookstore" scene from the 1942 Humphrey Boggart film The Big Sleep (where he is Philip Marlow on a case), the more risky stock was kept in the back rooms and access was requested via coded expressions such "have you anything new," where the customer - if excepted - would be shown through to a backroom where the "new" material would be found. He (men where the only customers) weren't encouraged to linger too long and would be called upon to leave if he had any doubts about the nature of the material or wanted to challenge the high asking price.

After the Second World War things lightened up a bit and even mainstream shops in the area starting selling (fake) naturalist and health magazines. Once again the British hid behind their double standards and the magazines rarely showed more than partial nudity and generally displayed the young girls (which somehow seemed in the foreground) playing beach ball or splashing around in water.

Nevertheless these where the only erotic images openly available to the British market; although these fell way behind what was available on the continent (in places such as Hamburg and Paris) where pornography was a common currency.

In 1957 came the Wolfenden Report which was an important milestone in British sex. The above named Lord compiled a report that went before Westminster Parliament. Its subject: Britain's changing sexual and moral climate. When the laws came in to operation it made prostitution in to a crime for which you could go to prison for (if prosecuted enough times) and, at the same time, paved the way towards the legalisation of homosexuality between men - it had never been an offence between women.

Around those times casual sex was very easy in London and Soho was the most popular port of call for those looking for it. Prostitutes and quickie brothels where everywhere. Some girls worked from first floor flats shouting down terms and conditions to those loitering below. Secret or private it was not.

Many of the brothels and flats where run by a new breed of young West Indian men who had come to the UK as part of a British campaign to fill vacancies in the low paid sectors - such as on the London tube or as hospital porters. Some of them didn't like the low pay or lack the lack of career opportunities - and they drifted in to the vice world using their "girlfriends" as capital. Often they were spotted - zoot-suited - in the nearby Soho coffee shops waiting for the client to leave. While white pimps tried to keep a low profile these new immigrants almost wanted to advertise their status.

Under the surface London has always been a melting pot of crime families (many of them with English as second language - such as the Maltese), although very few amounted to much beyond starting illegal drinking and gambling clubs (sometimes in normal house or flats) and running minor crime rackets - such as running pep pills to teenagers.

In the post war years the two exceptions where the Krays and the Richardsons both very tough East End working class families that used extreme violence as a day-to-day working tool. Sometimes, even, against men that actually worked for them...

The Krays (Twins Ronnie and Reggie, plus an older brother Charlie) and story has been told in a mainstream film of the nineties (The Krays GB 1990), although it didn't accurately depict the fear that they transmitted. Even older hardened criminals such bowed to their ruthless dictate.

Slum landlords like (the late) Peter Rachman (a name was so synonymous with bad housing is included in English dictionaries for it - Rachmanism) rented Soho flats to prostitutes to work out of. Naturally he charged several times the normal going rates and claimed total surprise when told of a vice arrest: "She seemed like such a nice girl," he would state.

For the likes of the Krays and the Richardson's these people were a constant meal ticket; although Richard brothers (Charles and Edward) had a legitimate businesses such as a Revue club and a scrap metal business - while at one time or another the Krays ran a nightclub and a casino.

Naturally the two "firms" hated each other and fought over turf - a hatred that would end in senseless murder when Ronnie Kray shot small-time crook (and Richardson cohort) George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub in the East End of London. A crime he would later be sentenced to life in prisonment for.

While most of the vice runners (such as Rachman) had bodyguards and dogs these where no match for what the gangster families could muster. Only the craziest Soho/West End criminal wasn't afraid of them. To complicated things even more Ronnie Kray was a homosexual (although he hated effeminacy in men) and made contacts and friends in the gay underground. Often supplying boys in return for favours and information.

The Kray's simply demanded (and nearly always got) a slice of the vice action (gambling, prostitution, porno book shops, illegal drinking clubs - anything that wasn't strictly legal or was run by people that couldn't be termed straight) which they termed their "weekly pension" those that didn't give it were termed as "liberty takers" and threatened. Few needed to be taken that far.

There was little subtlety about it and they where the nearest thing to the ruthless American Mafia families that the UK ever had. They even met and associated with Mafia front people such as the actor George Raft (later on the UK's unwanted alien list) and the former world heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in London. They even flew out and socialised with the mob in the USA.

However their plans to bring gambling/vice junkets over to London on Mafia planes (a situation that inspired the Bob Hoskin's film The Long Good Friday - GB 1980) was interrupted by gang warfare. However the fact that the mafia where prepared to talk to the Kray's as equals (and even as a stepping stone in to the West End vice rackets?) shows just how far they had come. The twins where only in their early thirties.

Prostitution (per se) is not a crime in the UK and has never been so. Soliciting as a prostitute is, however, which makes the work of the police very arbitrary. Prostitution, however, was viewed as a misdemeanour crime and it was virtually impossible to be imprisoned for it prior to the early 1960's. The Wolfenden Report recommended laws (later created) that made repeat offenders liable to jail - many left the profession stating that this was beyond what they would sacrifice for their pimps.

Soho exploded out of its secret back rooms in the late sixties on the back of the permissive society, drugs and pop music. Opportunists put softcore (images of couples that may be having sex - for example) porn in with their more normal ultra tame stock and held off the police by way of massive bribes. The more foolhardy even sold hardcore under the counter or via mail order. No pop world party was complete with an 8 mm stag film bought from deepest Soho - which the pop world visited often due to it also being home to the offices of the vast majority of song publishers.

The newly found Metropolitan Obscene Publication Squad (the first ever dedicated UK vice squad that started in the mid 1965) quickly became a joke, even in police circles - the mere mention of their name meant corruption and bribery. Officers that didn't like the deal where moved on elsewhere.

It was also a good time for those in Soho porn game because the both the Krays and the Richardsons had all but self destructed by 1967 (all parties recieving long jail sentences) - leaving only smaller, and less dangerous gangsters to worry about. Sanity was restored.

The happy house of cards fell within a couple of years, with arrests, trials and imprisonment of the corrupt officers that stretched to the very highest rank in the force. Some have called it the lowest point in British police history and the tabloid press had a field day. It changed British policing policy for ever (mixing with criminals on a social level was then seen as routine and "part of the job"), however the trails are rarely mentioned in official police histories.

However the "porno" genie was out of the bottle and wasn't going to go back. As the sixties turned in to the seventies the newly formed (and better regulated) Vice Squad took on newly rich "adult industry" businessman like the Gold Brothers and David Sullivan who pushed visual imagery to the limit - even writing to Scotland Yard asking for clearer guidance as to acceptability. Letters that were never answered for legal reasons.

In the course of time most of the major players would be brought before the court and prosecuted for something. Although not always at the first time of asking. People like David Sullivan (today a mainstream publisher of newspapers such as The Sport - a downmarket sex and sport daily) even seemed to tease the authorities. Parking their Rolls Royce's on Soho's double yellow (no parking) lines and excepting the parking fine as a business expense.

Sex cinemas where something else that got up the noses of the authorities. Shabby and smelly with low lighting they made their money through rotating cheap sex films - some of which where semi-hardcore, although few featured close-ups or ejaculation. These places got around the law by claiming to be "private clubs" and therefore outside of the normal cinema classification code which had long been in place.

In time Westminster Council (which regulate the Soho area under national - parliamentary - law) gained extra powers and shut the most obvious offenders and also some of the more dubious shops - such as Janus which had a taste for fake school girl "punishment" sets; although it has since reopened. Some of them produced by the legendary (and now late) "Harrison Marx" who is known in the spanking scene world-wide and a man who kept a photo studio in Soho - partly to thumb his nose at authority.

Peep shows came in in the early seventies, eating up the coins of the curious as they waited to see the half dressed girls. Slots where introduced so the girls could take tips from those that "wanted to see something sexy." Most customers seemed happy to push there pound notes under the glass to see the girls' sex organs in close up - or in certain cases at all. Fantasy studios also open up - allowing men to take nude/semi nude photographs - camera and film (although not development) thrown in. Both remain to this day.

Video was the next major battleground. The lack of TV channels and alternatives such as cable TV made the UK one of the first to get in to home video in a big way. The major TV rental firms went in to overdrive and made fortunes by renting them at afforable monthly rates.

Naturally for many this was the first time that people could view porn in their own homes (8 mm projectors been far from commonplace) - early surveys said that one in four tapes sold in the late 1970's - early 1980's was erotic - some it hardcore or near hardcore. Most of the product came mail order or under the counter - sometimes using postal addresses abroad. Holland was the most popular choice.

The get quick merchants either made disgracefully bad productions (the girls asking for directions in mid take) or pirated the work of others - mostly US porn. The later being the most popular as it was free and the makers had little clout in London. Some of these tapes where selling for as much as 60 pounds (over 100 dollars at the conversion rates of the time) some parties where making a killing.

Short of saleable material some producers bought legally from US porn producers. Loops that where knocked out at a rate of 5 or 6 scenes in a day and smuggled in to the country. Early porn stars such as Juliet Anderson remember appearing in these quickie productions that never appeared on the US market.

The video rental trade wanted to cash in on the phenomena too - although it was not keen on renting hardcore so took cut down versions of the tapes that were edited in ultra rough fashion. The music and image often jumping roughly and scenes ending before the participants had even disrobed. Nevertheless these tapes proved popular and specialist video features such as Electric Blue - which was soft-core but unflinching - appeared.

The government response was the 1984 Video Recordings Act which brought back censorship (cassettes did not then have to be classified - although cinema classification was often used) and did so in such a way as to render even existing soft sex cassettes (such as Electric Blue) as beyond the law.

The 1984 law gave the law enforces a strong weapon, because it meant that any tape not certificated was automatically illegal. If found it could result in an open-and-shut case - their was no "free speech" angle to mangel a jury with. Naturally the hardcore trade went underground - where it has remained, little changed, this very day.

Today some shops use a double storeroom method, where very extreme material is not held on the premises, but is brought in (in response to customer request) from nearby by way of a walky-talky or mobile phone. Video shops also open that are really squatters, the door being jemmied and replaced in the dead of night. Most of their stock is duplicates - some even carry fake "18" certificates. For now the police seem happy to ignore it.

Strip clubs have not really been part of the Soho scene - with the notable exception of Paul Raymond's Review Bar - although stripping in pubs and clubs is not uncommon all over London. Clip joints are far from unusual (places that look like strip clubs but don't feature any) and the owners try and wrestle large amounts of money from "mugs" in return for some terrible champagne and five minutes with lightly dressed company.

New technologies such as the Internet and satellite TV have challenged the British government - who cannot legislate for outer space or cyberspace - but they have struck back by making legal threats to those supporting the space-based porn trade from UK soil. In short, making the sale of card or decoders illegal - although it still goes on.

The present Home Secretary, Jack Straw, doesn't seem to want to lift the UK's hardcore (as the term would be understood in the USA) ban, although other bodies - such as the British Board of Classification - seem ready to give ground. Already letting more and more go, even clear penetration for cassettes sold exclusively in licensed adult stores - the so called 18-R certificate.

Soon, however, Internet technology (through ADSL and cable modem) will have overtaken all supporters of censorship for adults and the government view will be worthless. Even today many Londoners don't have to take the tube to Soho Square - Soho is, today, in the corner of the room and it doesn't require even require a raincoat with a turned up collar to use it."

Britain Relaxes Porn Censorship

7/00 David writes: In case you haven't heard, the British Board of Film Censors have now issued new guidelines and will allow depiction of consensual sexual activity in films and videos which are sold in licensed shops or via mail order to adults (i e over 18).

Their press release states that this will include genital contact,including oral, and penetration, both male and female. Any depiction of forced sex and obviously minors is still not allowed. The Government (namely the Home Office) have indicated that this is now acceptable and effectively brings the UK into line with everywhere else in Europe. They have stated that they intend to bring in legislation making it an offence to supply such material to minors (and indeed covering other areas, for example where minors view this material because their parents have negligently left it lying around the house).

This follows a general relaxation of police activity in the areas of pornography and a recent case where a film maker took the BBFC to court after they declined to give some of his films certificates (R18). The court found in his favour and the BBFC have now issued these new guidelines.

5/20/01

British pornographer Richard Desmond bought the English mainstream newspaper Daily Express in 2000.

The North London businessman made his fortune in phone sex lines, his Fantasy Channel and such porn magazines as Asian Babes, Big Ones, Amateur Video, Fifty Plus, Eros, Forum, Readers' Wives, Big and Black, Contact Girls, Double Sex A, Electric Blue, Horny Housewives, New Talent, Nude Readers' Wives, Only 18, Private Lust, Red-hot Pack, X-treme, Mothers-in-Law. (From the British Sunday newspaper The Observer, part of The Guardian, 5/20/01)

In 1991, Desmond made porn deals in America and Europe, including one with American businessman and Gambino crime family associate Norman Chanes. Chanes was convicted by then US Attorney Rudolf Giuliani in 1985 for federal mail fraud.

One of Norman's clients was a company run by Richard 'Ricci from the Bronx' Martino, convicted of attempted robbery and assault. New York law enforcement officers told The Observer 5/20/01 that Martino reported to Gambino captain Salvatore 'Tory' Locascio, whose father was convicted of racketeering with Gotti in 1992.

In 1991 Chanes bought ads in Desmond's sex magazines. But a few months later, the Americans complained that they had received a bad deal and they wanted one million pounds back.

In late 1992 Desmond's then managing director, Philip Bailey, went to New York. Bailey subsequently told Andrew Cameron, former managing director of Express Newspapers, what happened next: 'He told me that he was staying at a hotel in New York and he got a telephone call in his room to say that somebody wanted to talk to him about magazine distribution, so he went down. He said there were two guys who said: "Let's go and talk about it". So they took a stroll outside. They took him into the back of a car, a stretch limo perhaps, a vehicle of some sort, stripped him, applied a cattle prod to his testicles, put a gun to his head, drove him down along that road near the Hudson, said to him: "You go back and tell your boss it's a short hop across the pond," and threw him out on the sidewalk.' (The Observer 5/20/01)

A source close to one of Desmond's bodyguards, James Brown, told The Observer that the threat to Desmond's life was real and that it came from the Gambino family. 'It was £2million in cash or Desmond's life. For three days Desmond agonised, and then, according to our source, he came up with the full amount. Brown delivered the two million in five Nike bags, to the backroom of a London restaurant.'