/ 8 June 2001

Hello sex, goodbye dirty mac

Until last September, it was impossible to buy hardcore pornography legally in the UK. Since then the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has passed about 250 hardcore titles uncut for sale in licensed sex shops. This year it is expected to pass more than 350 titles that could generate in excess of £50 million worth of business. Several city centre sex shops – once solely the domain of the dirty mac brigade – have been spruced up to cater for an increasingly upscale clientele, while an estimated 100 videos a week are being sold by one outlet of the self-styled ”passion and fashion” High Street retailer Ann Summers. As the media fixate on the more unpalatable offerings on cyberspace’s sexual menu, Britain’s legitimate porn business is booming.

And yet Britain’s laws governing the production and distribution of pornography – the strictest in Europe – have not suddenly changed. Indeed, the Obscene Publications Act, which has straitjacketed the UK’s adult entertainment industry for decades, has not even been reviewed since 1959. What has changed, rapidly and spectacularly, is the British public’s attitude towards pornography.

Just how tolerant of hardcore porn we have become surprised the BBFC last summer, when it collated the findings of a national survey undertaken following a High Court ruling on its decision to trim seven adult films. The BBFC was successfully challenged by Sheptonhurst Ltd – owner of Private, the UK’s biggest sex shop chain (and whose ‘management consultant and legal adviser’ is Frank Sullivan, brother of publisher David Sullivan) – and Prime Time, a Shropshire-based distributor run by a former mortgage salesman Greg Hurlstone.

The vast majority of participants in the BBFC’s survey, which involved two ”citizens’ juries”, 10 public presentations and submissions from individuals and public groups including the Mothers’ Union, felt that adults have the right to see explicit sex if they wish to. This was backed up by the National Centre for Social Research’s survey in November which showed that since 1995 the public has become far more permissive in its attitude towards the portrayal of sex on adult subscription channels, video and the cinema. Hurlstone believes that the internet, lads’ mags and envelope-pushing mainstream movies have all been cultural catalysts.

According to the Obscene Publications Act it is illegal to publish material that ”tends to deprave or corrupt persons who are likely to read, see or hear it”, and it is entirely up to juries to decide what is ”obscene”. With almost everything sexual potentially open to prosecution under this infuriatingly vague label, the UK’s tiny legal adult industry has survived largely through self-censorship. For years, porn films, classified ”R18” under BBFC guidelines and available only from licensed sex shops, allowed nothing stronger than ”brief erection shots” and ”indications of shaft insertion”. Blowjobs were depicted by ”the mechanics of head-bobbing”.

The trade in illegal harder stuff became so enormous that a Home Office Minister, Tom Sackville, initiated a controlled experiment in 1996. The then BBFC director James Ferman was discreetly encouraged to pass two titles, including the Prime Time film BatBabe, that offered lingering erections and glimpses of oral and penetrative sex. However this unilateral liberalisation vexed Customs officials who complained to the incoming Labour Government’s Home Secretary, Jack Straw, who has variously described porn as ”nasty” and ”degenerate”, quickly clipped BatBabe ‘s wings soon after Ferman conveniently retired. When Prime Time submitted another film, Makin’ Whoopee, which contained content similar to BatBabe’s, the BBFC now argued that it was too strong.

Prime Time appealed to the Video Advisory Committee and received more heartening news. ”It [Makin’ Whoopee] may offend or disgust, but it is unlikely to deprave and corrupt,” observed the committee, whose members include Fay Weldon and Biddy Baxter, the 75-year-old former editor of Blue Peter. Emboldened, Prime Time and Sheptonhurst submitted six other titles to the BBFC which predictably demanded the removal of ”all shots of penetration by penis, a penis being masturbated or taken into a woman’s mouth”. Again the VAC sided with Prime Time. This time the dispute was taken to the High Court.

After the BBFC was forced to pass the seven films without cuts it had no choice but to relax its guidelines. When these were published last September they turned out to be more liberal than many porn distributors had anticipated. The list of activities now permitted to be viewed in ”R18” films includes: ”Erections, masturbation, oral-genital contact, licking and sucking, penetration by finger, penis, tongue, vibrator or dildo, group activity, ejaculation and semen.” In other words, everything that has been legally available in the rest of Europe and the US for decades. Still prohibited, however, is any depiction of non-consensual activity, fisting, bestiality and anything that could injure less supple copycat viewers. ”As far as we know, we are the only country that employs a doctor to watch the films and judge whether the insertion of certain objects could cause physical harm,” boasts BBFC spokeswoman Sue Clark.

”To be honest, we were absolutely stunned with the guidelines,” says Hurlstone. ”Of course we knew the public wanted real hardcore – our turnover has doubled since last September – we just didn’t expect the BBFC to be quite so pragmatic about it.”

Since being caught on the hop, the UK’s eight major porn distributors (and, indeed, several upstarts) have been making up for lost time, mopping up video and DVD rights to hundreds of US and European titles. Among these entrepreneurs is 31-year-old former television producer Anna Kieran, who runs Hot Rod Productions with her partner Chris Ratcliff, former head of softcore adult cable Fantasy Chan nel. Based in Hackney, Hot Rod is releasing four titles a month and has four differently branded lines which incorporate genre classics such as Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas and up-to-the-minute titles featuring major adult stars.

”The new guidelines have given us the chance to build a proper industry,” says Kieran. ”We’ve started off well because there is a big untapped market, particularly in films designed for couples. Nevertheless it is still a challenge to change most people’s perception of the porn industry. It isn’t mansions, cocaine-and-girl parties. It is a serious and unglamorous business.”

Hot Rod aims to capitalise on the new liberal climate by producing its own porn movies and it has already locked in financing from various ”City investors”. Kieran says that this year the company will begin production of the UK’s first high-quality British hardcore film, which will be budgeted at around £200 000 – more than 10 times the average cost of a US porn film. Furthermore, it will feature ”all-British performers and will be shot on various British locations”.

In a bid to get the nascent UK porn industry treated like any other business, Kieran is spearheading moves to create a trade body for all British porn professionals. ”We need to look towards the US and the rest of Europe and create a safe and professional working environment. But we also have a unique opportunity to tackle issues such as Aids before the industry even gets started. We should decide which test we should use or look at using our own clinics.”

Then there is the issue of performers’ pay. Kieran is concerned that if there is no regulation a US producer could set up in the UK and pay women 10 times what they’re used to and quickly put the fledgling British outfits out of business. Or, more likely, unprofessional British fly-by-night operators could exploit or abuse inexperienced women.

But before any of those bridges can be crossed there is the small matter of finding the performers. ”Our talent base is used to soft porn. In the UK there is only a handful of decent guys and a few girls who do hardcore,” laments Kieran. ”We have produced some big porn stars, but they have all gone to live in California where they get the red carpet treatment. I’m sure though that some of them would return if there was a proper industry in Britain and they were respected here.”

This is a seductive argument, considering that this is exactly what has recently happened in Britain’s mainstream film industry. But curiously for a country where topless photos of girls as young as 16 are published in the tabloids, there is far more stigma attached to appearing in even softcore in Britain than practically any other country. Whereas in the US ”name” porn actresses make most of their income on the celebrity lapdancing circuit, in the UK, where the lapdancing industry is still in its infancy, the clubs are at pains to play up the wholesomeness of their establishments. Kieran acknowledges that in the early days of UK porn production it will probably be necessary to use a few European women – most likely from the Czech Republic – but she is convinced that it will not be long before Britain produces a local star system.

She concedes, however, that it is going to be much harder to find the men: ”Every guy I meet thinks they can do it but when I audition men it is obvious they have no idea. I usually just tell them to drop their pants and masturbate and I can tell within seconds if they have what it takes. And, frankly, most don’t have it.”

An even bigger problem for Kieran is finding directors: ”I am inundated with commercials directors saying they want to direct a porn film, but you really need someone special to create real heat and capture it on screen. So many porn films are utterly tedious because the performers look like they are just going through the motions.”

But before the industry gets started there is the thorny problem of anticipating what sort of porn British people will actually want to watch. ”Up to a point gonzo titles and true amateur footage have always done very well here – all those Ben Dover films in which ‘an ordinary bloke persuades ordinary girls to strip and have sex with him,” notes Kieran. ”But we really don’t know if there is a market for professional-looking British films simply because no one has ever made them. We do know most British people don’t like the silicon Barbies of American porn, but we don’t know if there is a market for high-production value films featuring British girls in local settings.”

One US producer and distributor, who requested anonymity, corroborates the British aversion to Barbies. From LA his company supplies thousands of hardcore titles every month to UK punters by post, but he says there are very few British takers for the chemically and surgically enhanced LA poster girls. Another distributor points out that the Spanish website of Private – a different company from the Sheptonhurst company with the same name – gets 100 000 orders a month for films featuring ”European-looking girls”.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the mail-order business presents a major obstacle to the newly legitimate British industry. There are only 120 licensed sex shops in the UK – Sheptonhurst owns 48 of them – and mail order within the UK is still illegal. This effectively means that while a distributor based in, say, Amsterdam, can legally ship R18-strength material to a Manchester customer, a London-based distributor cannot.

”Part of the problem is that the British public doesn’t even know they can buy the same strength films legally in the UK,” explains Hurlstone, ”and the other part of the problem is that there are too few licensed sex shops. Also, while some of the licensed shops have become much slicker too many are still sleazy.” Hurlstone believes the UK could easily sustain 500 licensed sex shops, a view shared by the BBFC president Andreas Whittam Smith. Hurlstone estimates that ”around 600 000 videos are sold legitimately each year and six million illegally, mostly pirate copies in pubs or under the counter in the unlicensed sex shops”. Porn distributors believe that an increase in the number of sex shops would offer customers a better deal. At the moment distributors sell their videos for around £6 a copy and the shops charge anything between £20 and £60.

Hurlstone says the relaxation in R-18 material is a ”good start”, but the industry and the public is still crying out for better distribution: ”The situation regarding mail order is clearly ridiculous, especially in the light of all the websites but the government doesn’t want to appear to be doing anything in reaction to the internet. When satellite broadcasters start showing hardcore – and that is only a matter of time – we will really see a boom in this country.”

Hardcore: the facts

Porn in the USA The US porn industry is worth an estimated $10-billion each year.

Cable and satellite stations earn $310-million a year from broadcasting porn.

There were 11  000 adult movies made in LA last year compared to 400 Hollywood releases.

The industry bible Adult Video News reviews over 400 movies per month.

Production costs range from $50 000 to $250 000.

A top performer can earn $1 000 per day.

A hit video will sell 10 000 copies.

Americans rent 700 million hardcore videos a year.

There are 70 000 adult pay-per-view websites.

No sex please, we’re British:

Britain’s chattering classes have seen erections, fleetingly, in films such as Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane or Catherine Breillat’s Romance because of a 1954 code added to the Obscene Publications Act to ”allow obscenity” as long as it was in ”the interest of science, literature, art or music”. In other words, the proletariat doesn’t go and see arthouse or subtitled films. In recent years, the content of 18-rated films has been getting stronger to reflect public taste. Intimacy, the latest film from Hampstead darling Hanif Kureishi, which, like Romance, features scenes of fellatio, has just been granted an ”18” certificate for cinemas. As has the controversial French film Baise-Moi, with only one 10-second cut during a rape scene. The blowjobs in Baise-Moi apparently remain.