Who Knows!

The poet Philip Larkin’s poem Annus Mirabilis begins: “Sexual intercourse began in 1963….. Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP”. The following years saw the birth of Swinging London and its alter ego the permissive society. Towards the end of the decade, topless scenes began appearing in mainstream movies. And at the beginning of the Seventies, I think it was, Penthouse shattered the pubic hair taboo. Before Larkin’s watershed, such matters seemed to be behind closed doors. I am currently reading an excellent book about the Profumo affair, the scandal that shattered the establishment in the early part of the Sixties. It paints a picture where all manner of debauchery and deviant behaviour was practised by the rich and entitled (but woe betide any of us plebs should carry on in such a way, chance being the fine thing). Stephen Ward, the central figure who was to take his own life, had a seemingly infinite number of willing girls on tap to indulge the gentry’s basest desires, at the top of the tree, of course, the tragic Christine Keeler and the not-so-tragic Mandy Rice-Davies. These girls did not come from “respectable” families and were referred to as Ward’s “popsies”. It got me thinking (again!) about the plethora of dollies that visited Shaw’s house and other locations for we know what at the same time and before. I may be coming across as totally naive but it did seem there were plenty of young girls at that time who were willing to engage in activities for male pleasure polite society would very quickly frown upon. One such was early Sixties S&S trouper Jane McKay pictured here (scanned from a poor contact sheet, so I apologise for the lousy quality), along with all the others who found their way into ToCo Publications — and similar back-street fodder. However, I would hesitate before suggesting they entertained anyone in the same fashion as Ward’s production line. What does connect them, though, is one simple thing. And that was declared most eleoquently by the famous/notorious madam Cynthia Payne: “Men like sex, girls like money”.