The Sullivan Sex-Shops.

[Foxbark]

Greetings Friends,
Although I have contributed a number of threads concerning that great British institution of the 1970, the 'Sullivan nasties' (for the the few uninitiated here a stable of porny - for contemporary British standards - magazines that dared to feature labia, limp dicks and the odd dildo penetration and were sold in sweetshops/newsagents under the name of 'Whitehouse', 'Playbirds' etc , in fact they still exist), I really haven't mentioned the chain of 'sex-shops' that David Sullivan set up the length and breadth of this sceptered Isle , usually with much consternation and hostility of the locals and such antics as firebombings and even the odd all night prayer vigil - yes, this happened in deepest darkest South Wales.
At their heyday Sulivan had scores of shpos, until their rash-like growth was curtailed and reversed by licensing legislation that allowed local authorities to decimate their numbers.
Well anyhow, I seem to remember that the shops were occasionally blessed by 'personal appearances' of Sullivan favourite models such as Mary Millington, Rosemary England etc who would sign autographs for a fee (Has anyone here attended one of those events?).
The spotty, priapatic, obsessive schoolboy in me having been denied the delights of Amsterdam and Soho developed an obsesion (engendered by Sullivan adverts promising the moon), with these shops and eventually on passing for an 18 year old plucked up the courage (after walking backwards and forwards past the shop-door and down to the nearest corner 15 times) to enter the den of iniquity.
And den of iniquity it was - a nasty, smelly little shop with black out windows, a great big sigh saying 'SEX SHOP' - gosh how unsubtle, located in a dowdy down-at-heel south London ring road that somehow matched the general decay and musty fug of the place.
Opening the door, I found very little porn, a few odd shocking pink dildoes hanging from the walls but stacks and stacks of old gramophone '78' records and other bric-a-brac rubbish , apparently this was placed there aas a licensing dodge to get around a 75% 'non-sex stock' quota.Anyhow the meagre porn on the shelves was shite - as expected from the master conman himself , consisting of the familiar Whitehouse type mags, but leavend with odd pirated Color Climax and Privates (in shrink fil of course), plastered with 'black dots' over the vital areas and obvious badly printed bootlegs.
- Oh and I remember the salesman was the most aggressive, insistant man of his type I've encounteed in my life - Giosh the lenths we went to for a few dregs of porn way back in 1985!!

[andysmz]

I think the 75% quota was after licensing had been introduced and the unfriendly reception was merely typical of any sexshop manager in Lahndan - I remember Soho bookshops in the 80s where the sales staff had clearly been on the same training course as the doormen for those stripclubs where drinks were unfeasibly expensive and the strippers never actually appeared.

However, I did visit the Private Sex Shop in Newcastle in 1978 and the contents were pretty much as you describe (except the 78s). Shrinkwrapped pirated Private mags with all the best bits blacked out. Everything was overpriced and needless to say those discount vouchers from the mags didn't really work.

I have my doubts that Mary, Rosemary etc ever turned up at any of the shops (well maybe some of the early ones in London) and think the whole thing was just another Sullivan scam. Remember that, not only had Mary been at the shop (and fucked the manager) she had also shagged most of the other inhabitants (male and female) of the relevant town according to the black and white write-up in the mag.

[Mad Koala Bear]

Foxbark, reading your post was like stepping back in time. For those who weren't there, the rip-offs by Sullivan are well documented elsewhere on this board.

[Jenkinson]

The memory of visiting seedy Private Shops of the sort that Foxbark so well describes is one of the shared experiences that must unite many members of this forum. My fascination with them began in much the same fashion as his. By my mid to late teens, I had already managed to become a fairly regular reader of Knave, Men Only, and Club International, and they always contained full-page advertisements for the erotic delights to be found in the Sullivan sex shops, along with a cut-out voucher promising a free porno mag (usually described as Swedish or Scandinavian, and rarely if ever honoured).

I first summoned up the courage to enter one of these alluringly 'wicked' places in (I think) 1982, just after the ban on window displays. It was a small establishment on the east side of Walkers Court in Soho, now part of the Harmony shop, and it was marginally better than many at the time, in that there was a table displaying some unwrapped magazines that the customers could flick through in order to whet their appetites and make their choice. Very likely, therefore, it was outside the Sullivan chain.

I did not live in London, however, so most of my subsequent porn-buying expeditions were made to the dismal provincial Private Shops of the sort that had to pretend that they were not in fact sex shops, but book shops which sold a few sex magazines incidental to their main business - their supposed main business apparently being the sale of Oxfam rejects, such as four year-old copies of the British Rail timetable. They were indeed decrepit places in decrepit districts, often near railway lines, with roughly boarded up windows that made it hard to tell whether they were open or closed. You felt such a fool when, after posing as a casual passer-by, you hastily barged into the entrance of the notorious store only to collide with a locked door! The Southampton, Salisbury, Bournemouth, Reading, Aldershot, and Swindon shops were the ones that I came to know best. I've written of some of my experiences as a customer in the thread entitled "Were you ever ripped off by David Sullivan?":

http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...%22#post343902

A lengthy thread, that one!

I liked to imagine that buying porn was a rather debonair and rakish activity, but it was hard to sustain this notion when confronted with the Private Shops. When you managed to get through the front door, you would usually find yourself in a strange improvised lobby made of sheets of unpainted hardboard with no decor except the warning notice required by law. The next obstacle would be either a pair of slatted swing-doors like those of a saloon in a Western or else a kind of curtain made of thin strips of red, yellow, white, and blue plastic, of a sort only otherwise seen in instead of a kitchen door in a transport cafe. Some of the strips were always torn and dirty, and it was with these draped around your shoulders that you made your grand entrance into the much anticipated Aladdin's cave of eroticism - only to be grunted at by the bored scruff behind the counter.

Foxbark writes that "the meagre porn on the shelves was shite". He's essentially right, of course, but I wonder if this is the judgment of hindsight. At the time, I have to admit, I was powerfully stimulated by at least some of the pictures in those faked, pirated, and censored mags. They did the trick, so to speak, and I kept coming back for more. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that Foxbark is mistaken in saying that Whitehouse and Playbirds are still in business. I've not seen new editions of them in any of the usual outlets for a year or two now.

I too wondered a lot about those much-advertised tours of sex shops by Whitehouse starlets. The curvy brunette Zena Whitehouse once played a major role in my fantasies. When she was supposed to be visiting the Bournemouth shop, I racked my brains to find some way of seeing my porno idol in the luscious flesh. It was impossible: I was still at school at the time! If anyone did attend these events and actually met the models, I'd be interested to hear about it, for, with the wisdom of age, I fully share Andysmz's scepticism about the visits ever having taken place. In the early 1980s, though, it pleased me just to imagine that the dark and dingy little shop had been graced by Zena's fantastic buttocks, well-rounded breasts, and shapely thighs, preferably encased in black PVC boots!

[Foxbark]

The strangest thing about the Sullivan chain of 'sex-shops' (actually whatever you could purchase there certainly never included 'sex'), is that DS himself couldn't have made a better job of making these places seem as horrible, dirty and sleazy as possible.If you didn't feel like the proverbial 'dirty old man' on journeying to the establishment, you certainly felt like one on entry.I believe the chain still clings on to existence, but for the life of me, I can't see why anyone would want to patronise them.
The shops were invariably located in run-down, low-rent down-at-heel areas nand exuded a tangible sense of decay and dereliction.Worse on entry the shops smelled a horrible mustiness had bad decor and layout, unsettling rude, aggressive middle-aged male staff (of a distinctly 'dodgy' character) and to cap it all were decorated on the outside with foot high white letters proudly proclaiming 'SEX SHOP' as if to inculcate maximum embarassment to the punter.
Only the English in the 1970s could possibly make sex as abhorrent as this.

Anyhow, how times have changed! The excellent British porn house of 'Relish' (nothing to do with DS, but purveyors of fine product) have an establishment in Tottenham Court Road, lOndon for some years now.It's everything a porn vendor should be, the shop is light, bright and airey, clean with great decor and definitely non-sleazy with attractive young stff with a friendly manner and a jolly good stock of porn.

[kiwi]

Originally Posted by Foxbark

I can't see why anyone would want to patronise them.

Despite not living in Blighty anymore, Foxbark, I wouldn't think anyone does anymore (except maybe under age male virgins? )

I think they are run as money laundering joints & I doubt very much that DS has anything to do with them now - probably sold them on ... After all, he legit now!

Haa-ha-ha-haa - that's a laugh, aint it? But he is.

Kiwi

[andysmz]

Originally Posted by kiwi

I think they are run as money laundering joints & I doubt very much that DS has anything to do with them now - probably sold them on ... After all, he legit now!

Haa-ha-ha-haa - that's a laugh, aint it? But he is.

Kiwi

I think you might find that the vertically challenged Mr Sullivan still owns the Private Sex Shop Chain, albeit in a rather roundabout manner.

All the licensed Private shops are supposedly owned by Darker Enterprises Ltd. This is a private company limited by shares registered in the UK under company registration number 2021360. The MD of Darker Enterprises Ltd is Raymond (or Roy) Glen Darker and there is another director Colin Charles Mason. They also have a subsidiary called Sheptonhurst Ltd ( you might just recognise this name as one of DS's companies from the 1970s) which owns the shops which get round the licensing requirement and is also a porn distributor i.e. they supply the stock for the shops. Strangely enough, these companies are frequently represented in licensing applications etc by a Mr Clive (alias Frank) Sullivan, who just happens to be DS's brother.

[kiwi]

So thanks, andysmz, for the info.

This is a laugh though. His standard advert for his Private chain of 'sex' shops as seen in his British publications of the 80s, such as Playbirds.



Looking at the advert/promo now, you can see that he's not really lying about anything, except '... you'll be assured of a warm welcome.'

One time in London I went into one of his shops (I didn't buy anything because ... - ) and as I was looking around I noticed that there were loads of cheap cowboy paperbacks on the top shelves, only their spines showing. I inquired of the 'freindly' male assistant what these were all about and he told me to 'Fuck off out of it you cunt!' - Whatever that means?

[MaxJoker]

The last experience i had in an actual British sex emporium was circa May 2002,and it was just as die as i remembered from three years previous .As the thin streak of piss behind the counter immediately got snooty (Despite my legendary charming personality) at me asking if he had any DVD`s with Missy in (I mean doesn`t it save time to ask ?) .Then went on to try and push a cheap looking slavic gangbang thing on me, and as i was briefly staring at the rack out of nowhere name dropped Cathy Barry telling me he knew her. Then probably due to my obvious lack of interest (I shrugged ) said the buy two get one free offer had now ended, eventhough the orange signs where still stuck on the front of each magazine shelf. Which led to me getting clenched (Like in fist) with him , going up to a sellotaped 80 pound priced bagged multi pack and opening it. As i did so he of course told me not to , but as i told him you`re fully entitled to check before you buy. Oh and wouldn`t you know it but in that pack of ten there were four duplicates ( Two had been used as the top and bottom of the pack just opened at different pages ) and three soft core magazines that wouldn`t have embarrassed a womans guild meeting ! . Thankfully there were a few people in the shop who saw this and i think it must have given them pause ?,along with hopefully going out and spreading the word to their friends. Because i wonder how many people had bought those packs and got ripped off ?, as i`m taking it such practice hardly goes hand in hand with a sensible returns policy ?.Anyway his response to my discovery and annoyance was just to repeat parrot fashion that i shouldn`t have opened it , i replied that i wished his parents hadn`t been brother and sister and politely took my leave .

Sure i guess there must be decently run shops out there , but just the same " Buyer ALWAYS Beware ! "

[Foxbark]

So, these scams were going on as late as 2002?
By that time, of course, unlimited free porn from the internet was ubiquitous, as were £5 hard-core DVDs from the Chinaman and lots of good quality strong American material from the sweetie-shop.
Plus there were some very good (legit) sex-shops (eg Harmony) operating in London's West End which actually sold what they claimed to sell at a reasonable price.
Was Sullivan still up to his dirty tricks so recently?
Were there punters still uninformed enough to actually risk a purchase at his shps?
Hasn't the force of competition corrected the fat little crook?

Originally Posted by GreenSkull

The last experience i had in an actual British sex emporium was circa May 2002,and it was just as die as i remembered from three years previous .As the thin streak of piss behind the counter immediately got snooty (Despite my legendary charming personality) at me asking if he had any DVD`s with Missy in (I mean doesn`t it save time to ask ?) .Then went on to try and push a cheap looking slavic gangbang thing on me, and as i was briefly staring at the rack out of nowhere name dropped Cathy Barry telling me he knew her. Then probably due to my obvious lack of interest (I shrugged ) said the buy two get one free offer had now ended, eventhough the orange signs where still stuck on the front of each magazine shelf. Which led to me getting clenched (Like in fist) with him , going up to a sellotaped 80 pound priced bagged multi pack and opening it. As i did so he of course told me not to , but as i told him you`re fully entitled to check before you buy. Oh and wouldn`t you know it but in that pack of ten there were four duplicates ( Two had been used as the top and bottom of the pack just opened at different pages ) and three soft core magazines that wouldn`t have embarrassed a womans guild meeting ! . Thankfully there were a few people in the shop who saw this and i think it must have given them pause ?,along with hopefully going out and spreading the word to their friends. Because i wonder how many people had bought those packs and got ripped off ?, as i`m taking it such practice hardly goes hand in hand with a sensible returns policy ?.Anyway his response to my discovery and annoyance was just to repeat parrot fashion that i shouldn`t have opened it , i replied that i wished his parents hadn`t been brother and sister and politely took my leave .

Sure i guess there must be decently run shops out there , but just the same " Buyer ALWAYS Beware ! "