What ever is going on in India? Some upstart minister has banned a satellite TV channel for showing a woman licking an ice cream. Has the man had some kind of mental breakdown? Watching women eat desserts is one of the great innocent pleasures of life. I used to do it all the time in the circus and it never failed to perk me up. I even carried packets of freshening wipes to offer to ladies whose indulgence left them with particularly sticky mouths. The minister’s idiocy seems to be an extreme reaction to the fear of spiritual pollution brought about by India’s economic liberalisation. The older generation, steeped in the morals of the late Empress of India, are terrified that the young may discover the more authentic tradition of the Kama Sutra. What would then stop them from shaming their elders by discussing sexual gymnastics at the dinner table? Hence the desperate measures to keep anything resembling hanky-panky off the TV screen.
As a gorilla, I have mixed feeling about pornography. Animals living in the wild have no need of it because sex is going on all around them. We hairy apes treat live action as something to be enjoyed when you're having a picnic with the kiddies. Mating elephants are a particular favourite: it’s a bit like watching a drunkard outside his front door trying to fit a key into the lock – slapstick comedy at its finest.
As far as humans are concerned, any television producer will tell you that a bit of soft porn is essential to attract a decent audience for quality late-evening drama. In my circus days, I often saw the clowns watching TV plays exploring serious social issues such as poverty, alienation, family breakdown, etc. You can bet your last pair of undies that they wouldn’t have bothered without the prospect of a pliant pair of boobies materialising mid-way through the transmission. Dogmatic opponents of pornography should bear this in mind before condemning it as a corrupting influence.
Hard-core porn is a different matter altogether. Far from encouraging people to have sex, it seems to take the place of it. The man who gets addicted to watching other humans bonking is on a sure path to impotence. I have only heard one good argument for making such films, which was made, unintentionally, by an elderly Irish lady. This woman was a wealthy widow, who being a great fan of circuses had helped us with our pre-event promotions when we visited Dublin. After our opening show, the all-female acrobat team invited her to a trailer for drinks and a chin wag.
“Oi wouldn't tink av comin' widout de marvellous blatherin' gorilla!” said Mrs Sweeney.
I wasn’t the sort of ape to disappoint a lady, particularly if she happened to be a fan, so I went along to the trailer and took an unobtrusive seat by the rear window. For all her talk of marvellous gorillas, the widow Sweeney seemed a lot more interested in chatting to the girls, and after few drinks the ladies seemed to have forgotten I was there. As is customary on such occasions, the conversation drifted into matters of a personal nature.
“You gals are so lucky wid de pill an' de sex-oo-al revolooshun,” declared Mrs Sweeney. “Oi wus a teenager when oi got married an' me an' me 'usban' knew nathin' about sex. Nathin' at all!”
“What did you do on your wedding night?” asked one of the girls.
“We agreed ter show each other what we 'ad,” replied the aged one. “An' when oi saw what yer man 'ad oi burst into tears!”
You would scarcely believe the outpouring of sympathetic cooing this revelation provoked.
“I don’t blame you darling,” said one of the girls. “When I saw my first one I wanted to call the police!”
Her co-performers giggled as if recalling their own sexual initiations, while I remained impassive, staring at my toes with my ears pricked up.
“Wus a week before we wus 'usban' an' wife in de proper sense,” continued Mrs Sweeney, “an' tree years before oi got any pleasure from de act.”
“Well you’re luckier than my sister then,” piped a cheeky female voice. “She didn’t enjoy it until after her divorce.”
“Find a gran’ fella, did she?” inquired the Celtic dowager.
“Found a good sex toy!” retorted the acrobat, prompting the entire female contingent to laugh uproariously, Mrs Sweeney being the heartiest among them.
These reminiscences convinced me of the need for explicit – yet tasteful – sexual films, aimed particularly at the pubescent human maiden. A girl should not have to endure an unpleasant shock before her first experience of love-making, and should also be reassured about the adaptive qualities of the human cha-cha. I should imagine that my friend Dickie Attenborough would be the right man for the director’s chair.
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