Does any phrase bring to mind the atmosphere, the aroma, of the British 1970s better than "sex maniac"?
Not a rhetorical question - I genuinely am curious if there's a more evocative word or phrase.
I mean, there's "secondary picket".
The ad above is from 1976. The Sex Maniac's Diary launched in 1972, which surely proves its echt-Seventiesness. ("Kinky" would be the much cooler 1960s precursor I should think) (In fact, the Diary has a Kink of the Week listed)..
It reminds me of this forgotten book that I actually got for Christmas that year, I'm really not sure why, given that I was about 13 at the time.
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A sort of spoof on Superwoman - a 1975 best-selling guide to achieving female omni-competence by Shirley Conran - but also a genuine guide for the modern gentleman. Apparently it too was a best-seller.
A riff on "Male Chauvinist Pig" - another very 1970s phrase.
The only things I can remember from Superpig are Willie Rushton's advice on sex: a gentleman always says "thank you" afterwards. And also that prior to intimacy, a man should always undress top down - shirt first, then trousers and socks. Trousers removed while the shirt is still on, he considered an undignified look that would blow your image of suave savoir faire in the boudoir.
Back to the Sex Maniac's Diary - someone I knew at Melody Maker, a freelancer, one of those interesting oddball characters who found their way into the inkie press, actually worked for Tuppy Owens, the female entrepreneur-activist behind the "Sex Maniac's" brand (there were Sex Maniacs Balls and the Erotic Awards and all kinds of other products - this chap was involved in all of that). This would be late '80s, very early '90s, when you would have thought that the "sex maniac" concept would seem frightfully dated.
Actually looking into her life, Tuppy Owens seems to have been a genuinely progressive figure. And she died earlier this year in fact.
The concept of "sex maniac" always makes me think of the wonderful trailer for this classic of softcore smut, a/k/a "funography"
I love the husky elation of the woman singing the theme song: "this is your life, Timmy Lee!"
I say "classic", but I still haven't watched the whole film, even though it's out there
Timothy Leer-y
There's also a film called Confessions of a Sex Maniac, but not sure if this is from the actual official series of Confessions... books / films, which always stipulated a profession or occupation or line of employment, that happened to lend itself to sex-mania
1974, need you ask...
So is the conceit of the novel / film series that "Timothy Lea" is both the author of the books and the protagonist, doing a series of jobs that lend themselves to how's-your-father?
Doug Keeley reminds of the Confessions of a Pop Performer flick - in which Robin Askwith's Timmy Lea plays in a glam band called Kipper
A rip off of the Confessions template
Although there was a Confessions of A Plumber's Mate book....
Another rip-off of the Confessions template
Possible convergence of "sex maniac" and "secondary pickets", ahoy
Brings a whole new spin to the idea of trade union congress…
"Shop Steward" - another '70s-scented phrase of course
Andrew Parker points to the Australian counterpart - Alvin Purple
Whose occupation is water bed salesman
"Purple" - I fear this is meant to connote a la "crimson crowbar"
Ooh, something much much earlier - 1934!
However I think it was originally just called Maniac and then repackaged as Sex Maniac and repositioned for the porno market. In the '70s or '80s
Not sure if any of the following have any relation to Tuppy Owens's brand
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A serious thought - the journey from "sex maniac" to "sex addiction" tells a story about our times. From permissiveness and libidinal liberation to a medicalized era and the idea of appetite-as-affliction
Mind you I suppose - as jocular as an expression as "sex maniac" was, it did contain the idea of psychopathology
What is the literature of sex mania?
Portnoy's Complaint.
The early creepy short stories of Ian McEwan (Ian Macabre as he was nicknamed) have an angle on the souring of Sixties liberation-drive into something seedy, sordid, and depressive-hedonist. There's one involving some blokes who work in a sex shop in Soho... and another about an all-nude singing-dancing-fornicating West End theatre production... and then there's the ones about incest, child molestation (two of those, very different) and Los Angeles as where erotic politics slackens into nullifying decadence.
There's at least a couple of porn film called Sex Maniac and Sex Maniacs - both from the 1970s
But probably the place where the concept lived largest was TV comedy. Everyone is being accused of being one, or claiming to be one.
As suggested by Phil in comments:
Hanky panky, how's your father, slap 'n' tickle, get your end away, leg-over ...
cf words that feel 1980s onwards: bonk, shag, rumpy-pumpy, nookie
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How's about music?
Well, there's this Ian Dury character Billericay Dickie....
Not about a sex maniac, but about a sexy windowcleaner - or is he? (Argument that the song is full of innuendo and is about about a sex worker who vigorously enjoys his work)
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I actually know a sex maniac.... Always on the pull, always going on sex holidays.
This lad's like a characterological throwback to the 1970s - men with eyeballs popping out on stalks and necks that swivel every time a curvy young lady walks by... panting... sweat popping off the forehead and damping up the hairy palms... slavering for a glimpse of knickers...
Like a young, very good looking Benny Hill with ultra-hip music taste
A dirty young man, in fact...
1970s-throwback too insofar as he doesn't use the apps, he's a chat up merchant, always getting girl's numbers in the street.
Funny thing is that he is of the generation that is supposed to have gone off sex, to be doing it markedly less than previous generations... either dissatisfied by or deflected from the Real Thing by their porn addictions... or paradoxically turned off sex because of its insta-availability through Tinder etc... in exactly the same way that streaming can create musical anhedonia, a wilting and atrophy of the urge...
Not him though
x
I still remember a scene from the comedy series Butterflies in which Geoffrey Palmer is sitting at the breakfast table and son Nicholas Lyndhurst arrives, wearing a t-shirt that reads "I Am A Sex Maniac". No words exchanged, it's all in the expression on Palmer's face.
ReplyDeleteOoh gosh I wonder if there is an image of that out there - I should add it to the post. That would be tail-end of the '70s seeping into the early '80s.
DeleteOne for the sex maniac playlist:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3YYv1ngb8E
Never heard of that one.
DeleteI have never seen a Confessions film (a terrible omission) but wasn't their central conceit that the Askwith character actually wasn't a sex maniac, but continually chanced upon his amorous encounters? A bit like Spawney Get in Viz comic.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of ancient taxonomies, I chanced upon the fact that the term "hippie" long pre-dated the Sixties. Here's an example from 1946:
"In the railway station at York there were a lot of men we called Hippies, and they were after the new clothing that we had just received. All clothing was rationed to the general public, so they could make a killing if soldiers could be convinced to give up their brown bags of clothing. One of the boys told a hippie that he would sell his, but not until the train was moving, as it was illegal to sell our issue. So when the train started, there was a quick rush to the window: the lad got his money and threw his brown bag out. We told him he was a fool, as he would never get the points for a new suit, but he just laughed and told us that he had just sold his dirty laundry and his old uniform, and that he still had his issue and his good uniform!"
Story is here btw:
https://www.normandy1944.info/stories/walter-uden
Yes, I think the Askwith / Timmy Lea character is always up for it, being a lusty young lad, but the idea is more that he is surrounded by sex maniacs keen to take advantage of him - randy young women not getting enough from their official partners, stuffy and often much older husbands, etc However this is based mainly on watching the trailer
DeleteI didn't know that about "hippie" - it does seem like with most youth culture etc taxonomy, the word always precedes its famous phase of use - often by decades. In the case of punk, by centuries.
Probably just stating the obvious here, but I’ve always thought there was a deeply sinister undercurrent to the jovial / jokey use of the phrase “sex maniac”, even *within* the context of ‘70s pop culture.
ReplyDeleteI can’t help cross-referencing it for instance with the innumerable crime & horror movies from the same era in which the cops survey a grisly murder scene and say, “..looks like the work of a SEX MANIAC”, or similar... it always evokes the uneasy tone of Hitchcock’s ‘Frenzy’, more than anything else; sweaty swingers strangling victims with their garish ties, and so on.
I think in the UK it mostly means "very very randy". Sex on the brain.
DeleteIf there is a sinister side it's more on the level of "how to turn your date into a sex maniac" i.e. the aphrodisiac, Spanish Fly etc. Which pops up as late as the Beastie Boys video for "Fight for Your Right To Party"
Does any phrase better capture the atmosphere of 70s Britain? I can’t think of one. But there are some other contenders. Particularly in the fields of economics and industrial relations, like your examples. Stagflation. Work to rule. Three-day week. Energy crisis.
ReplyDeleteCulturally, I think there is only one that is equally potent in bringing back the memory rush of how it felt to be alive in that era: Luton Airport.
Indeed there was a song about Luton Airport - by Cats U.K.
Deletehttps://youtu.be/dldJCeZjcBo?si=8QfZPV8CrwmLsUVk
Here you go Ed:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BAOkkFZpZw
Haha yes that definitely does it!
DeleteSongs about sex maniacs - added to the post, Ian Dury's "Billericay Dickie".
ReplyDeleteAlso Morrissey's "Roy's Keen" - a song about a sexy windowcleaner (or is it? nudge nudge wink wank)
DeleteAnd Prince of course (of course!), with the female perspective, in "Darling Nikki" - "I knew a girl named Nikki, I guess you could say she was a sex fiend".
DeleteJust to flag “Confessions of a Pop Performer”:
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6gfOI_kXX7E&pp=ygUeY29uZmVzc2lvbnMgb2YgYSBwb3AgcGVyZm9ybWVy
Robin Askwith is the drummer in the glam rock band “Kipper” (straying into “Shock and Awe” territory?) and their performance of “The Clapham” in this clip rather predictably descends into farce…
Confessions of a Sex Maniac was NOT part of the Columbia Pictures Confessions series. It was released in July 1975, in between the first and second in the series, Window Cleaner and Pop Performer. The profession in question in Maniac was an architect's assistant(!) played by Roger Lloyd Pack (Only Fools and Horses, Vicar of Dibley) who performs the sex scenes with considerable enthusiasm (so I've been told!) Columbia were not amused by the distributor's choice of title and took out an injunction against the film, which as a result had to be hastily reissued in February 1976 as The Man Who Couldn't Get Enough.
ReplyDeleteSex maniac literature of the period: The Dice Man is the first to spring to mind.
ReplyDeleteJohn Updike has loads of stuff.
I'm not sure The Rachel Papers counts. Is Charles Highway a sex maniac or just a teenage boy? I don't think Money counts, either. John Self is a consumption maniac.
Is it worth considering works associated with second-wave feminism? Erica Jong, for example. Or perhaps Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden. The intention may have been to liberate women by recognising their sexual desires, but the stained-overcoat brigade would definitely have found plenty inside as wank fodder. (Similarly, The Joy of Sex).
Anyway, from what I gather and remember, wife-swapping, flashers and transvestitism were all sitcom staples that turned peaky and died sometime in the 90s. I also recall Lolita often cited as a go-to book where one could get one's jollies, from Tony Hancock to Red Dwarf. It'd be a brave sitcom to attempt that nowadays.
Isn't "bonk" just a bit of manufactured tabloidese, created solely because the redtops couldn't use the word "fuck"? And when Austin Powers 2 came out, I imagine tabloid editors being overjoyed that it was finally acceptable for them to replace "bonk" with "shag".
And here's a Fast Show parody of the Confessions series, entitled Confessions of a Door-to-Door Cucumber Salesman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JicjC2GXKzE
Looking at all this stuff, it underlines a point I have made before that mainstream British culture up to the mid-to-late Eighties was essentially the same as the culture of the 1930's - it's basically George Formby intensified by more modern (and more pervasive) forms of media.
ReplyDeleteIt's only when the Boomers become the majority of adults in the 1990's that you get a real sea change, essentially from "smut" to irony.
"Orgasm Addict" comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteI think that is a portrait of adolescence as opposed to sex mania per se
DeleteSex Mania at the movies:
ReplyDeleteWhat’s New Pussycat (the shrink he goes to for help with his addiction is as bad a case as him)
I Am Curious Orange / I Am Curious Blue
Finally saw these twin movies after years of intrigue - its reputation misleads. Hardly any explicit sex in it at all. Nor is it primarily about erotic liberation - much of it is about a documentary being made by a young woman about the class system in Sweden. The fact that she is a sexual free spirit is almost by the by. Outrage over the nudity and sex took it all the way to the Supreme Court but by today’s standards it is mild stuff.
W.R: Mysteries of the Organism - 1971 documentary fiction about Wilhelm Reich of orgone box and sexpol fame. Can’t remember much about it, certainly not much in the way of sex scenes as I recall. This is a different kind of sexmania - an intellectual, cerebral type - theorists wildly overestimating the revolutionary power of unbridled eros. Hard to take seriously after reading Foucault’s History of Sexuality vol 1