Sex in Soho | 1980s Soho | 1980s London | Thames Reports | London |1981
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- Central London's Soho district has always been associated with the seedier side of London life. but in the late 70's early 80' s local shops and businesses were being forced out only to be replaced with an ever increasing number of sex and pornography shops much to the local residence dismay. Thames Televisions Allan Hargreaves investigates how this is affecting the "village" life that Soho use to have. First transmitted 26/03/1981
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My father was the box office manager at Raymond’s Revue Bar in the 70’s to late 80’s. I often worked in the cloakroom and took coats, sold ice creams in intervals etc. A fascinating time and an insight into the Soho industry. They often had touts hanging around trying to detour people to sleazier clubs in the area. I got an insight into peep shows and the dark side of Soho. I was around 17 at the time. Paul Raymond was very affluent and always had a glamorous model on his arm
The irony of watching this now is the exact _opposite_ is happening today to what was going on in this documentary! Sex industry establishments shutting down one by one (not many left in Soho now), being replaced with deli's, cafes, boutiques etc.
the soho area was/is filled with pedos - seems odd that @yeyeywy is upset that there is a lack of predators in the soho area
@@B.A.Pilgrim is there any evidence for that, at all? Or are you simply going to accuse anyone who comments on here of sympathising with "predators"?
The comment by the planning officer made me laugh.
You should visit this every other day.
He probably did when it was finished 😂
I was a professional wanker from 1982- 1985 for IDANT INC. sperm bank in New York. Neighborhoods like SoHo kept me supplied with plenty of stroke magazines to practice my trade. I can proudly say that I gave the gift of life to couples who desperately wanted to have children. I only regret that direct deposit wasn’t allowed at the bank. Glossy pages and good times…..
It already happened in 2011/12 they cleaned up soho for the olympics. Grave error in my opinion.
SOHO! I can't begin to describe what a fascinating place that was for me, as a 21 year old USAF airman in 1981. I would go down to London every other weekend and have a blast. Met my Irish girlfriend, in Soho where she worked as a hostess at the Pussycat Club. It wasn't a strip club back then. It had a stage where Adult shows were performed: Dancers, singers etc.
If iirc she walked over to my table, where I had ordered a drink, and sat down. We were similar in age and hit it off. I actually got her home address and phone number! That dinner was expensive for an Airman 1st Class that earned less than $800 per month! Anyway, long story short, I show up at her place the next day at 8am. We dated up until I left.
We lost touch after I returned to the states. Been trying for nearly 40 years to find her. Finally, I just last week, hired a private detective agency in Belfast, NI, where she was from and now we'll see what comes of that.
Great documentary...brought back some very nice memories. Nice job ThamesTv. Thanks for the memories.
Hope you will update us if you find her
I hope you were able to find her
Hi there psycho
Hey nice story, good luck on trying to find her!
Did you find her?
loved london when it was like this
I used to live up West as a teenager ,All the clip joints foreign girls ,punk rock records ect good old days 🍀🇬🇧👍🏼
now it's just infested with foreign drug gangs.
How boring is London now ?
@@sianwarwick633sanitised
Exactly great days
Very, very dark side to Soho and the surrounding areas back then. Lot of crime, corruption and exploitation going on with the sex shops and there was at least one major case of police corruption linked to it. Soho, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square had serious problems with paedophiles. The west end attracted a huge number of runaway lads who ended up on the streets needing money, making them easy pickings for predatory paedophiles. Piccadilly Circus was nicknamed 'The Meat Rack' as a result. In 1986, the police broke what was essentially a very brazen child prostitution network. A man was pimping out young lads in the window of Piccadilly Circus's branch of Wimpy. Just a few years earlier, there'd been another scandal with a paedophile ring targeting kids in the 'Playland' amusement arcades. Sadly, a couple of the lads in that scene ended up murdered. 14 year old Jason Swift was murdered by the notorious Sidney Cooke gang. It's believed that some of Denis Nilsen's victims may have been picked up that way too.
Yeah - and back in the 1890s Oscar Wilde and his boyfriend Bosey were picking up rent boys in much the same area and racing them back off to the Savoy Hotel for overnight homo orgies. Soho was spoiled by “the vice” many decades before Thames TV’s priggish little doco, much as we may regret the displacement of legit businesses in the (19)80s.
There's a book called meat rack boy...lots of sickness within Parliament towards children
Wimpy 😂😂😂
How dare you write about LGBT people like that!
@@nicoladouglas3270 Sadly lots of sickness across every part of society. The people arrested were a massive cross section of society
I went to a cinema in Soho once. Some bloke said "Raincoat". I said "I haven't got a raincoat". He replied "No... Do you want one?"
I remember going with my mum to the smoke salmon shop and Camisa Italian shop. As a child yes it was a bit embarrassing for my mum, but it didn’t stop us from going also to Berwick street market.
At aged 13 l worked on the fruit & veg market. 1980 -84 very good times indeed. It was a bit dodgy when the market closed.
The Internet killed Soho
too true!
No it didn’t
Foreign money killed Soho.
Regrettably. Nostalgic-wise, I remember the good old days it was a dangerous thing to buy or read a copy of Playboy, FHM, Zoo, or Hustler at your newsagents or W. H. Smith having to look back and forth that your neighbour or someone's grandmother isn't seeing you buying or reading smut. Now, bloody PornHub or XVideos? Boring! And frankly tasteless, gross, and boring. Lots of viruses in these stupid websites too.
and thank god for that
I came to this video from another one that showed footage of Old Compton Street in Soho in 1985 - this was one of the “related videos”. In the first video, many of the comments were of the theme “The area’s not what it used to be” - now I’m seeing similar complaints having been aired in a report from 1981. It seems like it’s always been a thing, people complaining about perceived decline - come 2050 or thereabouts, I wouldn’t be surprised to see or hear someone say “this area was so much better back in 2022”.
People whine and whinge as they get older. I think some people just can't handle the fact that everything changes over time.
@@th8257 You`ll be old one day,sooner than you know,and will be saying the same as them.
@@mjh5437I'm old now mate! Some people get grumpier than others as they get old. Maybe it's because I read a lot of Buddhist philosophy when I was younger. It really emphasises how absolutely nothing stays the same, and trying to cling to the past is a recipe for serious unhappiness, as well as being futile.
We visited a slightly grimy peep show there in the mid 80s & as the viewing shutter closed on my chum whom had an occasional Stutter in the adjoining booth - raged loudly “ oy ! - I haven’t c c c c come yet ! “
I wish you would post the whole documentary. There's a chunk missing off the end where my family was interviewed in our flat. It must be somewhere.
Be grateful for the time put into uploading this! You are absolutely shocking!!!
@@jasonantigua6825 I beg your pardon? Why am I shocking? I only said that I wish that the whole documentary was on here as my family who are in this documentary as residents of Soho were featured in it. It was quite emotional hearing my father speak in it as he died less than two years after this film was made. I don't understand why I am shocking. What a strange comment! Do explain.
@@jasonantigua6825 idiot comment
@@TheRomanoViazzaniEnsemble I agree with you. Shame a chunk was missing as I really got into it.
I worked in Wardour st. as a film runner in 1975 It was without doubt the best job i ever had...everyday something different.
They used to have lots of second hand record shop there.
Yes. I remember a great record shop on Berwick Market Street. Both sides of the entrance and at least a couple of floors of records
god yeah, i still have millions of wonderful, now rare, operas from that shop
Brewer Street is cited here. And Soho was indeed a seedy place. It still is. But citing famous nearby landmarks and notorious dens of iniquity does not do the argument for local businesses justice. Google map the same street now. You will find a no doubt very lucrative NCP car park, various commercial buildings - ie large corporate business premises, designer leisure wear boutiques and discerning fashion stores, plush drinking clubs, a luxury gym, and almost countless eateries and coffee shops. It all caters for rich people. Ergo, it is no better now, it is just far more affluent whereby ordinary working class people have been displaced. And this program helped in its way to achieve that monetarist end. Soho is now a dead place. No more music venues. No more affordable pubs. And no more local people like those seen here.
Soho used to be glamorously seedy, now it's just glamorous dahling!
Greek street, no?
Soho has lost its character thanks to corporate greed.
I remember when Soho was like this,amazing buzz for any teenage lad
Thats not what i mean at all @@B.A.Pilgrim ,i just meant the excitement of the area, as a country lad id never seen anything like it ,thats all
@@wavydave2693 Mr Pilgrim is clearly one of those people who just love to accuse anyone and everyone of being a "pedo" (sic), or a "predator".
I worked at Cecil Gee in the eighties. SOHO was seedy and the mixture of the old and new didn't mix well. Live abroad now and not been back since the mid nineties; Hope it has recovered.
I was born in 1981. Those women in the smoked fish shop would be horrified at London now.
Indeed !
Why
Why's that?
These women would have liked it if men were on display.
I thought she'd be proud there no longer sex shops in London?
Myself and my wife wondered down Old Compton Street a couple of years ago and were pretty disgusted at how sanitised and lukewarm it has become. Most of the seedy and edgy shops were gone and replaced by eateries and poxy clothing stores. Even Berwick Street was a bore.
As we opined about how mainstream and inoffensive matters were, a group of people roughly our age agreed of how we all missed the old Soho. There was always a frisson there and we exchanges stories of our exploits during the 80’s and 90’s. All had their stories.
Was loads of fun to hang out round there in the 90's. We used to go in a bar where they always had a couple of boy dancers. Then the big bars on Compton Street. Safest place for a young woman to go for a good night out.
@@medwayhospitalprotest
Despite its obvious prurience and smutty overtones, you really had to go some to find trouble in Soho. If you had dug that deep, you were probably up to something deservedly punishable, anyway. Madame Jojo’s was a huge draw for the ladies, way before drag became so mainstream.
Some of the most edgy places were indeed the safest and as long as all each respected eveyone’s sexuality, a grand time was had. As I was very familiar with the 80’s and 90’s fetish scene, I often sorted security for such events. Your comment, about the ‘safest place for a young woman to have a good night out’ rung particularly true. Whilst attending/working vanilla clubs, I would habitually get into a fight, get the hump or have to put up with huge egos/ar5eholes. The fetish nights were virtually trouble free and women I had introduced into the scene said they had never felt safer.
There was something magical about the once hidden naughtiness of Soho. Those small doorways, risqué goods, images and literature that skirted decency, coyly displayed with fraughtness. Though these pleasures metaphorically came ‘in a plain brown envelope’ there was still the thrill of opening. Nowadays, you can view no end of dilute, saturated images at the touch of an ever desensitising button.
No fun. No thrill.
Yeah, London in the 90's was great, happy times. Pubs with sticky carpets. When I finally left was when Greenwich had got a Starbucks and all the little quirky vintage shops were closing down. In short, gentrification and the sticky carpets were replaced by laminated floors and gastropubs. I also agree that what is available online now is far too easy to access, and seems to constantly push the envelope on how bizarre / violent it can get. Nobody needs to have an imagination of their own anymore! I am not a vanilla person either, and really not a prude, but the availability is concerning. Quite damaging to young people I think. @@zacetto
@@medwayhospitalprotest
One running joke, is that myself and my friends used to shop in Camden/Kensington Market, because it was cheap. No chance of that now - and the death knell when the Camden Town open market closed a couple of years ago.
As for the cyberspace accessibility of increasingly bizarre/violent images, it is comparable antithesis of watching TV, to reading a book. You do need an imagination. The question remains, with what is so readily available, where do the current generation go when they crave anything kinky/fruity? What was regarded as such, decades ago, is now so oxymoronically common place and mainstream.
And totally agree - it is very damaging for the young; this is not me being a prig. This current generation is the most socially connected, yet conversely seems the most troubled and isolated. With the constant dilution and abundance of what passes as erotica, I dearly hope this does not end in the same vein.
@@medwayhospitalprotest that was spunk on those carpets mate
‘Oh the British attitude towards sex’!
They closed the shop selling smoked fish. Men visiting Soho don't want the smell of fish..lol
I went all over London in 1985 on a brief visit, and I remember that place. Chicago had a little bit of that stuff, but not as big a carnival like that.
I also saw some pretty elaborate punks, with hair you couldn't sleep on, and I thought that era was past in 1985, but it still seemed to be going strong.
One can buy cheese or shoe lasts anywhere, but a good sex shop is something truly special. Bring back the sleaze!
“It was a nice little village, one could go to the theatre come home at night then go out to dinner” life of leisure before then !
Porn is, I mean, it's lying around like lint, but there are only so many ways you can put tab A into slot B before it becomes a bit of a bore and you start wanting actual intimacy.
Too true mate. Rather be 'doing' it than watching. Not a spectator sport! 😆
@Bunne Rabb I disagree, especially as I've got older I've come full circle - I find intimacy boring, I want freaky fun!!
@@cornellt4360 Works for me.
@@BunneRabb haha!
Worked in Soho 1975 to 1994 Duck lane and Dean St. full of small unique businesses and people crafts men and women..
Wonderful place to work, full of life.
I moved out due to high rent for my studio.
It's now a different place completely in 2023.
So glad I had the best years of my life there.
Did you get to see the Sex Pistols by any chance?
What a slimy reptile that Paul Raymond was. God only knows how much suffering that man caused to line his oily pockets.
From 16:19, the chairman of Westminster Planning Committee is councillor Whipham!
And the vice chair was a Miss S.Panking.
And I'm sure he did...
Mason
"peep shows" LOL nobody knew in the future you could get like a billion + porno's on the internet of every description possible
And for free. You gotta love the internet 😏
Oh what a waste
Time Machine please.
Would be interesting to recreate this walk today!
I’m lucky I got to see it all in it’s glory in the 80s . Thanks to Soft Cell I found my way there on my trips to London .
Yeah ok
Soft Cell?🙄😂😂🇬🇧
Ha ha yes...know exactly what you mean. I was 18 and desperate to see the seediness Marc Almond kept going on about.
@@davedaves431 Marc Almond made it seedy himself.Some people wallow in filth and decadence.
I walked through Soho as an 18 year old in 1991. An attractive women came up to me and said 'do you want sex? I said no
You had a lucky escape mate. They were mainly scams and expensive ones at that. She'd have given you a huge bill afterwards for 'extras' you had and within seconds you'd have been surrounded by a bunch of heavies.
@@johntate5050Really? You think so?
More likely he’d have been led up to a 3rd floor flat in the area, handed over a little more money than he could really afford, and been given a perfunctory (but genuine) sex act of some sort, then sent on his way within 30 minutes.
It’s not that sex acts are rare and highly valuable or worth making trouble about - and I believe most prostitutes will provide the services they are offering because they don’t want to create trouble with the law or other authorities.
Of course you can’t buy real intimacy or lasting friendship from a prostitute - that’s not what’s on offer.
Anyway, any normal 18-year-old should have absolutely no need for a prostitute, given that many teenage girls will gladly give 18-year-old lads what they’re after if asked nicely.
I said 'yes' and lost the last £20 I had in the world.
Now Soho is a gentrified playground for the boring and normal majority.
I went recently and it was full of the type of people who want to try and prove they’re rich even though they’re not.Yknow the type who put a shirt on or carry a fake luis vuitton handbag and try to act like a big shot when they’re really not
Just like the area around Times Square in New York, and the Yonge Street Strip in Toronto, Canada. When the officials cleaned out all the sex shops, they made the area gentrified, generic, and family-friendly.
One could eat like a King for a tenner !
A tenner was worth a lot more then. Not as cheap as it sounds.
It's rather sad in a way that the likes of Raymond's et al had to be sought out, whilst today the most disturbing pornography is almost impossible to avoid
i was a commercial estate agent in the west end in the 70s my boss (a partner of a very posh firm that had been in business for about 70 years at that point ) got instructions to sell a number of strip clubs and sex shops for the maltese mafia. I did a lot of the viewings and negotiations. My boss took a backhander from one of the leaders of the maltese mafia a bloke called mifsud . A little while longer mifsud was in court accused of murder. My boss was made to give back the backhander and it was all hushed up.
Paul Raymond grasping for the moral highground is something.
9:14 Back cover Soft Cell-Non stop erotic cabaret.
I’m glad they showed this . It had changed by the time I got there in 85
I miss the old Soho
(being able to walk in the middle of the street with ones bell-end hanging out) . . . siiigh !
what makes you think that has changed?
@@booth2710 sure one is still able to have a stroll with one's bellend out in Soho, but honestly it's just not the same now innit. sigh. 🇬🇧
Soho has lost its character thanks to corporate greed.
She would be 90 odd now wonder if she is still alive
When English was correctly pronounced and spoken .
Not down berwick street market it weren't chief...apples 'n' pears!
Nar day all tork like dis n dat ya know.
Funny enough @@johntate5050 YT offers the option to 'translate ' it😂
I think it’s gone back to somewhere nice to go to again
Bring back the days when people kept it real and not this generation of materialistic egotistical fake plastic people .
Stouffer ran Soho during this era. Anyone who says differently doesn't know what they are talking about!
I always thought there was something a bit odd about Harry Hill's cat.
more like the maltese actually
There were some good restaurants and a couple of pubs too.
There was tons of pubs!!!
There still is loads of pubs, and good traditional ones as well.
When the guy said "There was a big hoo-hah" I lost it.
Loved it back then a great way to loose all your money in 5 mins lol.
Brilliant😂. The irony being that all those men complaining about the sex shops were more than likely regular visitors after dark, hilarious😂😂
Oh if it were true that the objection was simply about all this being on open display for anyone to see, I would even agree.
BUT the real truth is that the objection is much more general, as it was for Mary Whitehouse (the prototype for Margaret Thatcher), Lord Longford & all the other moral crusading dictators, sex in it's depictions should be available to all grown adults, but under discreet restrictions, a title but no window displays as all sensible adult shop owners have it
Wonder do you still have all the junkies hanging around 'the tunnel' of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station (if that even still exists) and at the foot of the Centre Point Tower? Although strictly speaking, I guess, that would be Holborn?
Sadly all gone.
During the Punk era,Soho was one of the places to be.Soho Market etc.Nobody would bother you.🇬🇧
In the 70’s a Veined sleeve was a good night in @2:36
Councillor Whipham? 🤣🤣🤣 Hilarious. I bet he was round those strip shows every night. 🤣🤣🤣 Whipham out, that's what they called him. 🤣
The AIDS epidemic was just a year or two in the future, and I wonder how the sex plague affected all this_?
Cllr Whipham. LOL
What happened in Soho to me as a young man stays in Soho!🙈😂
Ah to go back to the hedonistic nirvana of 1980s Soho!- Nowadays just tame coffee shops
Those residents must have been wishing for t'internet 30 years before it came (no pun intended) along😂
Families living in soho in the 80s. WOW!
Phoaaww . Those were the days.
Soho is crapp now all nice and normal it’s not seedy anymore it’s been ruined
it all drugs and pushers and eastern european gangs on every street corner
Remember the strip clubs . They take a lot of your money , very little in return. You just about see a woman top less and that's about it . Very bad value . Amsterdam was way ahead of it at the time .
@@booth2710 and it was all paedophiles in the 80s.
Mate, the area was notorious for being full of paedophiles. Dunno about you, but I'm pretty happy that's all gone.
@@booth2710 Romanian and Lithuanian pickpockets too.
poor sound hard to hear what they were saying.
I think you need glasses !
Terribly seedy place for teenage tearaways/ runaways. Crazy what they got away with. Legal stuff? Fine. No problem. All adult. But way more stuff going on behind closed doors.
Soho, one of my favourite districts. Home of the BBFC, either you love it or hate it. And home of many delicious Chinese restaurants with cooked ducks hanging on the glass. It's not just perverted, lecherous sex shops and porno centres
RONNIE OSULLIVANS DAD HAD A LOT TO DO WITH SOHO BACK THEN
Bernie Silver was the top dog though
@@samfortune589 He most definitely was! And his bunch of heavies! The dandy gangster!!!
The infamous Paul Raymond makes an appearance trying to pass himself off as legitimate businessman. Worth the price of entry alone to hear the oiliness of his replies
Where's Dirty Barry??
Soho's changed hands again somewhat. A lot of the sex establishments in this programme have vanished with only several remaining. I think street market in Berwick street is still there, but a lot of the book shops that specialised in Hollywood film memorabilia have gone.
Yes it has become a lot more gentrified.
Different to how I remember it in the 80s and 90s.
How did they make such a racy subject so dull?
7:00 Back handers? Under the table? Bribes taken? 🤔
Do your research on West End Central !!!
6:05 ITS JESUS IN A STRIPPED JUMPER
2:41 Ross creations ? 😂
They should raid Dolphin Square and Jimmy Savile's.
Soho was better in he 1970's, the "Marquee Club"", Dark they were and Golden Eyedbook" book shop and "Jimmy's" Greek restauarant ". The tacky stuff was still a ripoff but all the other shops and cafes made up for it.
Cor blimey, white people speaking English in central London? How times have changed.
You've clearly never been to London
@@th8257 I've been to London hundreds of times, but with less and less enthusiasm in recent years.
@@drengskap don’t visit now. Are you a millionaire ?
2:55
How things have changed. Many people (i.e., not "seedy old men in anoraks") now admit that they watch porn. And that includes many women and even certain types of feminist. (Grammy-winning singer Billie Eilish said she was "addicted to porn".) I wonder what Andrea Dworkin thinks of the current state of affairs regarding porn. That's if she's still alive.
Good days
One of my first jobs in 1988 was at an actor/authors agents in Golden Square, just off of Brewer St. I was only 17. One lunchtime the office lothario took me along to a Peep Show. I couldn't believe what I was seeing!! I lost a lot of 50p coins in subsequent lunch breaks!
We are all here because of sex so why are people so offended by sex
Would you want to watch your parents have sex? I hope the answer is no! You would be offended by it! It doesn’t have to be forced out in front of everyone..and we’re talking about obvious perversions! And we’re all here from sex between a man and a woman.
@@its_rick_james_bich2575 how sad it must be for children growing up that didn't have caring parents to teach them about the birds and the bee's.
@@originalherdsman3524 Yes, I’m sure if you have children you probably couldn’t wait to sit them down and start talking about sex at the earliest opportunity. In fact, you probably let them choose their own gender!
@@its_rick_james_bich2575 it's called being a responsible parent, there's far to many young girls that ruin there lives because of getting pregnant at a very young age.
The majority of them end up living off benefits payed be the hard working tax payer's expense.
Also there is only man and woman and abnormal behaviour !!!
It wasn't just that. A lot of the sex shops in Soho were basically fronts for serious organised crime, a lot of which involved paedophilia
The word's first ever Karen lol
I have happy memories of being a young boy staring inside and laughing at the dirty old men popping in and out
You're very lucky that one of them didn't try and grab you. A lot of dirty old men who liked young boys in Soho back then.
New York City was the same
Soho was scum. I went just to have a look at a show and decided it was going to be a scam as the drinks were a scam
I liked the sex shows, Soho is a joke in 2022. Same happened to Times Square, 42nd Street, and even Bangkok............gentrification, terrible.
Mr R - doesn't give one
He was a fucking huge hypocrit.
a used to flog my arse down soho early 80s...made 3 quid...a month
Sex is for those that are not prudes.
Disappointing
Safe ....No immigration!
There was immigration then its just got worse in London.
Ah good ole China Town
Maltese Soho
Maltese and Italian's great time's and people , those where the days.
absolutely
They could have chosen another area to create this industry.
Then that area would have complained because it ruined their way of life.
✡️🇮🇱✡️🇮🇱✡️🇮🇱✡️🇮🇱✡️