Amusing article about COASM

Amusing article about COASM written by one of its actresses
Viewable online at
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,429768,00.html

Or reproduced here


The day Trigger bit my bum

Last week, an adult video store was fined £5,000 for selling Confessions of a Sex Maniac under the label hard-core porn. It wasn't. Cherri Gilham should know - she was in it

Sunday January 28, 2001
The Observer

A few weeks ago, Adrian, my local video shop manager, whispered to me out of the corner of his mouth: 'I've got one of your old movies.' My immediate reaction, after turning crimson, was to ask him how awful I was in it: any film I appeared in during the Seventies was bound to be a huge embarrassment today. Sarah Bernhardt I wasn't.
'You were pretty good,' he said, leering, 'in action.'
Oh God. He meant that he had seen me simulating sex in the altogether. Which also meant that most of my neighbourhood had probably now seen me wriggling around in the buff.
The film was Confessions of a Sex Maniac, which last week figured in a court case brought by York Trading Standards Office who considered it too tame to be in the Hard Core section of a video rental store in the city. The shop owner, who'd been charging £50 per tape, was fined £5,000 after customers hoping for something a little more outstanding for the weekend complained that the film wasn't raunchy enough.
Well, there's a relief - for me, at least. I am endlessly trying to explain that Seventies sex comedies were not considered porn at the time. It's been bad enough having to live down the label 'soft-porn actress', which stuck because I appeared in The Benny Hill Show; 'hard porn' would be well below the belt.
From the age of 20 I had wanted to be a serious actress but I was too lazy, after quitting drama school, to do three years' slog in provincial rep. No graft meant no craft - and no serious jobs. I was relegated to bit-parts in television comedies, stints as a game-show hostess and minor roles in Carry On films or even lower down the scale, the Confessions of ... movies.
Confessions of a Sex Maniac was conceived, produced and directed by a young commercials-maker called Alan Birkinshaw, in 1974. 'It was my first film,' says Alan, 'and it was supposed to be a send-up. It was easier at the time to get finance for that kind of movie than anything more serious. It started life as 'The Tit', then became 'Design for Love', then 'Success or Bust' and finally Confessions of a Sex Maniac. It became the longest running British film in the West End in the Seventies.'
Viewing it again at home (Adrian eventually let me rent if for £4), it was lovely to see some of my old mates yanking off their tops to reveal boobs of all dimensions. It would be unfair to name them here, since they may now be living salubrious lives in the suburbs and not want the spotlight of shame shone on them.
The story is about a young architect who dreams of building an office block shaped like a breast, and he spends the entire film in search of that perfect form. 'My wife was away at the time,' says Birkinshaw, 'and without her knowledge, we shot some of the film at our house. We were desperate for locations. When it was finished, everything was care fully cleared away, and my wife returned home none the wiser until she opened a curtain and a gaffer's clamp fell out.'
The film starred a young Roger Lloyd Pack, later to star as Trigger in Only Fools and Horses, and Vicky Hodge, who played an innocent (until the last reel) secretary. Vicky was a famous upper-crust model in the Seventies who blotted her copybook when she sold the story of her Caribbean romance with Prince Andrew to the tabloids. (Why should she care? She retired on the proceeds.)
Because of the paucity of the budget, Birkinshaw got me to play two cameo roles. One was a young girl in a curly wig, prancing around topless and coming on to Milligan the architect (Lloyd Pack). The other was a suburban housewife, Mrs Burrows, who seduces Milligan using high-falutin language and metaphors about Dante and Beatrice.
The blurb on the video jacket describes the film as 'poorly made celluloid cat litter', and whoever wrote it has a point. But there was actually some very funny and clever dialogue (which you might perhaps expect if you knew that Birkinshaw is the younger brother of Fay Weldon). Also on the sleeve is a picture of me, standing naked, head thrust back with Lloyd Pack biting my bum. Could I ever have hoped to be taken seriously?
After I left acting to the actors I became a mother. I wrote a newspaper article recently about the sadness I felt that my son would soon be leaving home. I received a letter from an 'admirer' who said how fascinating it would be for my readers to see a picture he had of me, a 'split-beaver shot'. In the parlance of adult shops that means full frontal, legs akimbo. I have absolutely no recall of when this might have been taken or what film it might have been snatched from. But I wish now that I'd kept my knickers on.