Sex in Soho | 1980s Soho | 1980s London | Thames Reports | London |1981 

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

Soho used to be glamorously seedy, now it's just glamorous dahling!

Greek street, no?

Soho has lost its character thanks to corporate greed.

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?

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

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".

Did you get to see the Sex Pistols by any chance?

And the vice chair was a Miss S.Panking.

And I'm sure he did...

Mason

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!

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.

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. 🇬🇧

And for free. You gotta love the internet 😏

Oh what a waste

A tenner was worth a lot more then. Not as cheap as it sounds.

I always thought there was something a bit odd about Harry Hill's cat.

more like the maltese actually

Bring back the days when people kept it real and not this generation of materialistic egotistical fake plastic people .

Sadly all gone.

There was tons of pubs!!!

There still is loads of pubs, and good traditional ones as well.

I’m glad they showed this . It had changed by the time I got there in 85

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.

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 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.

I think you need glasses !

Yes it has become a lot more gentrified. Different to how I remember it in the 80s and 90s.

Bernie Silver was the top dog though

@@samfortune589 He most definitely was! And his bunch of heavies! The dandy gangster!!!

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.

Do your research on West End Central !!!

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

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.

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 ?

He was a fucking huge hypocrit.

Maltese and Italian's great time's and people , those where the days.

absolutely

There was immigration then its just got worse in London.

Then that area would have complained because it ruined their way of life.