SEXIS WRONG

of our reign that we sold hard porn. The police, as
I saw it, gave me no option. Mike [Butterworth,
cofounder and business partner] and I had been
taken to the Eleventh Floor (one floor down from
Chief Anderton’s office) in Stretford House and
interviewed about Lord Horror and Meng & Ecker.
The police greatly disapproved of these titles.
We had a strong feeling that our time was up as
proprietors of bookshops on the high streets of
Manchester. Again, if you remember, my first
prison sentence was in Strangeways, just for
selling paperbacks. Now, the police told me,
they were going to get me sent down one way or
another. They had me in court two or three times
on Janus-related material [a spanking magazine
published in Britain].
I could see the writing on the wall, and I sold
heavy porn under their noses and in their faces,
unleashing a flurry of hard pornography on city
center Manchester. This in turn encouraged other
shops to do the same, so in the end the police only
had themselves to blame for the cumulus of filth
that dropped on them.
I got the job. There was no formal interview or any interview
of any kind—my face was known because I used to visit the
shop. I had no contract. Cash was in hand.
Hardcore videos were also offered, but the sale of these was
somewhat more discreet, and tapes were hidden in the various
holes, nooks, and crannies about the place. As the building
was very old and had a dilapidated basement, these hiding
places were many.
None of the hardcore videotapes carried proper covers—or
covers at all, for that matter. They were dupes created by
whom I don’t know. A couple of them were stored in the hollow
beneath a loose slat of the wooden steps leading to the
basement. Other tapes could be found behind loose bricks
in the walls.
David Britton: If I remember rightly, you did
Fridays and Saturdays with Bob amongst the
dying embers of what had been a fantastic shop in
its heyday. Do you remember all those video titles
I used to think up? Cuntsucking in Ackrington,
Muffdiving in Oldham, Whorewives of Radcliffe,
even. Or didn’t Bob carry on with that?
Unfortunately, Bob didn’t. A less imaginative method of identification
was utilized while I was there. Tapes were labelled
Fire or Sand or Concrete or whatever—a seemingly random
code that carried no obvious indication as to what films were
featured on what tapes, nor what particular sexual peccadillo.
Different tapes were geared towards specific tastes, but
I can only assume that identification lay in the places they
were stored around the shop.
Like all sex shops, customers were encouraged to return with
a half-price exchange policy towards their next purchase.
I have several surreal memories about working in Bookchain,
some of them relating to conversations Bob would have with
confused customers pertaining to videotapes.
“In the end the police only had
themselves to blame for the cumulus
of filth that dropped on them.”
The shop was not a patch of its former self. The downstairs—
once a comics emporium—was closed off to the public and
no better than a tip, with rubbish and bits of furniture strewn
about. All the stock was kept at ground level, the store strategically
divided by racks of books and revolving magazine
stands. To the right of the counter was a small section where
pornographic magazines were shelved. A handwritten note
pinned to a wall warned that this section was open to adults
only and that no browsing was allowed.
A good deal of the pornography on display was hardcore and
imported from Holland (through various nefarious channels).
Lining the shelves were copies of explicit straight and gay
magazines sealed in plastic bags and given a price tag often in
excess of £40 [approximately US$70]. It’s a price that seems
as expensive now as it did back then, but a price that people
were willing to pay for a product not legally obtainable.
Bob: “Have you had Brick?”
Customer: “Brick? No, I don’t think so. I’ve had
Slate. I think.”
David Britton: It had taken me years
to work out that you could sell more porn tapes if
you glossed them over with local references. The
incentive for the punter was that he would perhaps
get a raunchy sight of his next-door neighbour, or
even his mother-in-law. If you sold this homemade,
cottage-industry type of tape, you discovered they
parted with their £35 with greater alacrity. These
outsold all the Color Climaxes and Rodoxes ten to
one. Of course, the tapes bore no relation to the
title, but there was still some damn good action on
them, all pervert approved!
Circumventing the need to carry a sex shop license, the
“front” for Bookchain was the musty old pulp novels, truecrime
magazines, and music papers. Some of the general
172 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG