The Favourite Late-Night Softcore Pornographic Shows of my Youth by shoutingatco.ws
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Between the ages of 14 and 16 I was, like many my age, thankful for Channel 5’s public service of softcore pornography. This was a network that tried its best to create original drama, such as the Hospital! , and cutting edge soap operas like Family Affairs, then realised no one was watching and replaced them with wall-to-wall tits.
So here, for your nostalgia, is my summation of the best softcore pornography formats to be found on freeview. But before I begin, I must issue two caveats.
First, as I watched these shows with the sound turned down very low, I can’t provide much insight on the dialogue.
My house was very small, and on at least two occasions my own mother has walked into the room only to see the channel being changed very quickly and me pumping one out to David Dimbleby on Question Time. I still get involuntarily aroused when I see that man.
Second, this isn’t a discussion on the merits of the 10 minute freeview. I fail to see how the 10 minute freeview benefits anyone – the viewer or the channel.
I mean, these channels are trying to part you with your (parents’) hard earned cash in exchange for a night of titilation and terrible acting, only to give you the ultimate get-out clause just before it starts!
‘Here you are! Knock one out quickly and save your money! That one’s on us!’
What kind of a business model is that?! They must be losing millions. What’s more, I don’t appreciate being given a time limit.
So, here’s my brief guide to that national institution, late night softcore smut.
Red Shoe Diaries – Channel 5 – 1999-2000
It’s hard to believe that during breaks from filming The X Files, David Duchovny was playing a trouser pervert receiving letters from anonymous women, usually against the backdrop of a disused railway line. The plot usually featured a sexually repressed woman looking in through a window at a couple having it off, then somehow use that as an epiphany to start having it off with lots of men/women herself.
I’ll say it again, because it beggars belief – this series starred David Duchovny. I mean, who’s the British equivalent? Sean Bean? That main bloke off Spooks? Actually, because of the supernatural element, I prefer to imagine a Jonathan Creek-era Alan Davies starring in a British erotic thriller about the dogging community of the A3.
Eurotrash – Channel 4 – 1993-2007
If ever there was a watershed of skintertainment, it was the nightmare inducing Eurotrash, Channel 4’s under-the-counter gift to teenagers. Presented by Antoine de Caunes, a man so effortlessly cool he would wear comically large Y-fronts and still pull fit women, Eurotrash was your one-stop shop for features on naked Germans running cross country, erotic pop songs from bands you’d never heard of, and the fatally large breasts of Lolo Ferrari.
Pulls in Y-Fronts. Winner.
Infuriatingly, Eurotrash was just a little too surreal to be trusty fumble fodder. Many an adolescent’s thought process on watching would be summed up thus:
‘Yes, brilliant, a behind the scenes on a lesbian porn film, lovely.What’s next? A bearded Swede who makes sculptures with his own excrement. Right, back to a semi and there’s nothing I can do about it..’
People may look back on Eurotrash with fondness, but in my experience, it made knocking one off a hazardous chore.
Sex and Shopping – Channel 5 – 1999
One of the most frustrating sub genres of late night smutification is the tits dressed as education format. These shows run as follows:
We’re presented with a vague theme (masturbation; fetish; the porn industry)
‘Sexperts’ (is that a real profession? Is it? Really?) give us an inane background to the genre which only exists so that the programme makers can get round the censors.
‘Celebrity’ talking heads like Danielle Lloyd and Anthony from Blue offer us personal information about their sex lives that a) are probably made up, b) make us feel faintly sick, and c) only exist so that society can witness the fall from ‘grace’ of these ridiculous has-beens in the most humiliating way possible, and so that the programme makers can get around the censors.
We’re shown various cutaways of couples pretending to grunt in immaculate bedrooms.
Anthony From Blue. Pre-abyss.
For a modern day example, check out the distinctly average Generation Sex, a show which somehow manages to make looking at fannies boring. For the absolute balls-busting best in the genre, get on the internet and find the seminal Sex and Shopping.
SAS was a thirteen part documentary which, in roughly just under 13 hours of content, did not have a single reference to shopping. Not one. It came at a time when Channel 5 were trying to get away from their reputation for shameless tug-merchandise, so instead of merely cutting the X rated goods, they somehow commissioned a show which announced itself as ‘the most sexually explicit show on TV.’ It didn’t work. Thank you, Channel 5, thank you.
So that’s it. Red Shoe Diaries, Eurotrash, Sex and Shopping. My top three. I would now like to throw open discussion on the subject. What late night erotitainment did you spend far too much of your formative life on? That’s my euphemism for ‘banging one out.’ I didn’t want to end the article with that.
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© 2012
I avoided the ten minute limit imposed by those Adult Channel types by cleverly recording a weeks’ worth of them, thereby having 60 minutes of labia-free porn available to me on VHS for when I got in from school.
ahh Sex and Shopping… the day I got given a VCR recorder in my bedroom was a day of untold joy… Sex and Shopping every single night should I be so inclined…which I was, as I was 14 years old.
I genuinely did not think this would get the nostalgia it would.
While we’re on the subject, does anyone remember ‘Sex Court’ and ‘The Erotic Adventures of the Invisible Man?’
I missed this phenomenon, I was working in Amsterdam and New York at the time. Hookers and dope on the one hand, dope and sluts on the other.
I’m jealous of you, Bren, very jealous.
Although I did succumb to the joys of Channel 5′s softcore extravaganza and also attempted to gain some suitable material from Eurotrash, I was given a fabulous gift. We had a ‘dodgy box’ in our house that gave us ALL of the cable channels for free. When I was about 12 I told my dad that I was going to record the wrestling (royal rumble or something) one night so he wasn’t to change the channel.
So it was recorded and I triumphantly bragged about it to my mates and after school we retrieved the video and took it up to my room to watch. We got as far as Miss Kitty getting her saggy little baps out (which was amazing to us then) for no apparent reason after a match and BOOM the channel changes. My dad, God bless him, spends the next three hours watching a mixture of the adult channel and Television X.
My youngest of us actually burst into tears…he must have only been about 8 or 9 at the time, he was somebody’s little brother. But that video made me king of the plaground. I was everybody’s friend from there on out.
Neil
Hi, was wondering if you good chaps might be able to help me find the name of this film
okay, the film from what I remember was shown on channel 5 in the UK sometime between 1999 – 2001 I think. The plotline basically was about a husband (Ardee or Ardy maybe? I think?) a latin looking guy, who had been cheating on his older blonde wife marion with a dark haired woman named annie, this annie kind of reminded me of . anyway towards the end of the film, marion having found out the goings-on between them, she convinces Annie that she wants to join them in a threesome. so annie meets with Ardee, the sex scene commences between annie and Ardee, and during the couple having sex, marion is present in the room sitting with her back turned to them on one of those swivel office type chairs, she turns round to reveal that she is here to Ardy, and this results in a startled Ardy. Ardee is surprised to find that marion is in the room with them, instead of joining them, she them holds the couple at gunpoint. annie then says: “she’s going to join us, menage a trois for example” Marion: “Shut up annie don’t be a fool” Ardee: “Marion i’m sorry, do you want me to give you a divorce?” Marion: “haha, you give me a divorce?” “I want you to finish what you started, I’ve had to sit at home wondering why I wasn’t enough, knowing that that bitch was waiting for you, so believe me I can get much worse”. Marion: “finish what you started Ardee, you’re a professional, got to reach the finish line”. Marion forces them to continue having sex at gunpoint, she becomes unsettled after they continue after she’s asked them to stop and then fires the gun at them both. She fires blanks at them… and then talks for awhile before the closing credits roll. She says: “I didn’t shoot him, I fired blanks, come to think of it, I think he did too” lol “The gun was just to intimidate him”.
if anyone can tell me which film this is, It’d be a great help.
Cheers