[zuckerman]

Visitors to the UK magazine threads on VEF from the planet Omicron Persei 8 may receive the impression that a typical British mag of the 70s or 80s contained approximately 28 colour pages stapled between two covers.

But that is to overlook the bulk of the magazine's content. There were full-page adverts for Silk Cut (a legal means of euthanasia); promotions for vodkas (an over the counter anesthetic) with Russian-sounding names dreamed up by ad agencies; advertisements for 'XXX hardcore mag packs' (a harmless fantasy product suitable for nunneries); plus ubiquitous sales pitches for Non-Doctor vibrators, a heavy plastic device popular with security forces who used them as baton rounds.

Then there were the Readers Letters. Mile upon mile of carefully contrived column inches of smutty fantasy fare written by sweaty palmed out of work journos and would-be writers who tended to spend too much time locked in smoke-filled, dingy bedsits with the curtains drawn swigging large glasses of Jack Daniels to make them feel like Hunter S. Thompson.

Paid by the word, their standard of living was at the mercy of ruthless editors cutting their carefully honed erotic masterpieces of anything that might prove repugnant to the average reader. This would include any reference to female desire that wasn't simply a mirror image of male desire; the merest hint of erectile failure; clap; and arseholes (note for US readers: a European variation on an anus, with roughly similar functions), which did not exist in Britain at that time and hence could not form the basis of any erotic activity (anuses were finally introduced into the UK in 1995 after the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht).

However, the true nemesis of these unsung literary heroes were the dread 'Readers' themselves, who frequently had the gall to submit their own fantasy screeds in the form of 'letters'. Editors loved them, firstly because they did not have to pay for the contents, and secondly because few professional hacks, no matter how well-schooled in literary forms under Oxford's dreaming spires, could capture the natural tone of Kwik Fit Garage Demotic. And it was this speech form, above all others, which conveyed to the typical British porn punter the glorious illusion that what they were reading "really happened".

These pages, often exceeding in number those containing mere pictures of naked ladies in any given magazine, served one vital function and to understand it you need to be aware that the UK, in that time period, had in place anti-pornography laws designed to keep the minds of its promising young men pure and free of the sordid distractions of the flesh so that they could devote all their time to wholesome pursuits like soccer hooliganism and firing Non-Doctor vibros at Catholics and striking miners.

So yes, we had the Winter of Discontent, but no picketing British apprentice was defiled by the sight of a lass stuffing her fingers up her fanny; we fought in the Falklands but we can say with pride that our troops' moral was never, never undermined by a picture of a Page Three girl taking a high hard one.

But the ban on hardcore in UK wank mags, like any form of prohibition, inevitably provoked efforts to circumvent the restrictions. And this was the function of Readers Letters. You couldn't look at a picture of a tart chugging cock, but you could read about it. This 'picture=reality', 'words=fantasy' philosophical nuance, so beloved of the British ruling elite, gave us such impressive cultural phenomenon as silent film of Gerry Adams (a tireless campaigner for community relations on an island in the Atlantic) on English TV news channels having his words of peace voiced by an actor, thus protecting us from the Perils of the Real.

Although many a browser through Fiesta or Knave or Mayfair or Penthouse probably wasn't even aware of the vital psychological function of the wordy porn as it interleaved descriptions of actual sex amongst the demure pictures of scantily clad lovelies, hence reminding the reader that there were other things women were capable of other than looking slightly out of focus, I doubt those letters or stories could ever be held in such high regard as the actual photo sets, given the way the human brain is hard-wired for image recognition.

Most of us can remember our first glimpse of Debbie Ashby or Kirsten Imrie or Titanic Toni, or have our favourite sets imprinted indelibly on our minds. Many can even cite the mag in which it appeared. But how many of us can recall with the same acuity a cracking little Readers Letter that pushed all our buttons? Or even if you can summon up the gist of a splendid little 'real life' tale – about getting blown in a woman's changing room by a shop girl in Top Shop while your girlfriend was trying on a denim skirt in the cubicle next door, for instance (if I only had a Euro for every time that has happened to me!) – how many of you have been trying for 20 years to track down a copy of the lost/sold/loaned/wanked over until shredded and long gone copy of Fiesta you read it in?

And so, sadly, as the typical mag scan on VEF proves, all those implausible but necessary Readers Letters will be lost in time, like tears in the rain, like Gerry Adams once said.