Throughout his career, John Jesner Lindsay gave a number of interviews. Never one to shy away from the spotlight, Lindsay had a tendency for self-aggrandising and myth-making, like many of the pornographers I encountered while researching Under the Counter. His 1976 interview in Penthouse, however, is possibly the most in-depth conversation I found while rummaging through old adult magazines. I used this alongside legal documents when constructing Lindsay’s story in chapter five of Under the Counter. The interview comes at a time when Lindsay had been found not guilty under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for making and selling a number of films that where shot after-hours in Birmingham’s Aston Manor Secondary School. He talks of this case, his stance on censorship and his entry into the business. We also learn about his early years, from his school days to being a pirate radio jockey (not something I was able to prove) and eventually becoming a pornographer. He reveals his favourite productions and speaks about becoming a father to two twins. The interviewer, Andrew Dickson, does a decent job, particularly in the latter half of the conversation, although I still take some of Lindsay’s comments with a pinch of salt. I’ll leave you to guess what they might be. Interestingly, the accompanying pictures, one of which I have included here, was taken by Lord Patrick Lichfield, whose mother was the niece of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother! Five years later, Lichfield would be the offical photographer for Charles and Diana’s 1981 wedding, but here he is taking photographs of Britain’s most notorious pornographer.

Since this interview is rarely cited I have chosen to include it, in full, here. Did Lindsay really make a very exact 3,824 films over a ten-year period, meaning that he was making more than one a day over this time? Did he shoot the infamous endowned American stud John Holmes in a film called Hung Like a Horse (Denmark’s Theander Brothers did release a film under this title in 1975)? Who was the world-famous model that he claimed to have dated in the mid-1960s? Sadly, we’ll never get answers to these questions, as Lindsay died of pneumonia and dementia in Medway Kent on the 20 January, 2006.

John Lindsay

“There’s nowt as queer as folk,” is one of John Lindsay’s favourite sayings. And who better to illustrate the truth of this dictum than John Lindsay himself? At 37 he is a model family man with an attractive wife. Penny, two beautiful five-month-old daughters, a flat in Hampstead and a Burmese cat. Yet he is Britain’s most famous or infamous pornographer. To certain influential people, such as judges, people who write letters to The Times and others who presume to tell us what our moral standards are, he is the Enemy Incarnate. Lindsay’s activities, they imply, undermine the very foundations on which our society is built.

Lindsay himself admits to having made 3,824 “blue movies”. But it is not easy to find people who admit to having been depraved and corrupted by these films. In October, 1974 a jury acquitted him of “conspiring to publish obscene films for gain”. The films in question depicted young models dressed as schoolgirls having sex with men. Nor was that all. It emerged at the trial that Lindsay had shot the films in a comprehensive school in Birmingham and that the men were the
school caretaker and an ex-headboy. Social historians of the future will date the crumbling of Great Britain’s obscenity laws from the moment that a Birmingham jury walked back into the courtroom and pronounced John Lindsay not guilty in this trial. What kind of man is he ? Saint? Or sinner? The Devil’s ambassador to England or a brave man risking his liberty to bring about a truly tolerant society? Others have pronounced their verdicts on John Lindsay: judges, juries, journalists and leader writers in national newspapers. Now, for the first time, Penthouse puts in front of the public John Lindsay’s own story in his own words. We sent one of our associate editors, Andrew Dickson, to interview Lindsay, We one of Britain’s most talented photographers. Lord Lichfield, to contribute a photo-study of him. Lindsay sat down, stern-faced, in front of the Earl’s camera. “Say porridge.” teased Patrick Lichfield, Lindsay replied, in his inimitable Glasgow accent. “Ma business is pussy”. And on that last word his lips stretched into a wolfish grin.

Penthouse: What was the most formative incident in your childhood?

Lindsay: I was very keen on reading when I was young, I belonged to the local library. When I was about 12 I was curious, as probably all kids are, very curious about sex. And rather than ask mummy or daddy, I’d got a book from the library—a medical textbook. I read it very carefully and was fascinated by wee sperms and the womb and everything described in this book by Professor So-and-So.

One day in a religious instruction class, the teacher asked: “Who made you?” put my hand up and was singled out to answer the question. He said: “Come to the front of the class and tell the boys who made you”. I did. In return for telling the boys the truth! was given six of the best by the headmaster. Apparently I was supposed to say that God had made me. I was suspended from school, and worse still—and that’s what I’ll never forgive them for—a letter was written to my
parents saying that I was in need of psychiatric treatment.

My mother was frantic with worry. She thought her son was a mental case. I was taken to a child guidance clinic and a child psychologist there showed me pictures of the sun shining on a lamp post and the shadow going the wrong way and asked me: “What is wrong with this picture?” So I said: “You think I’m nuts, don’t you ?” Which only made matters worse.

From that day on I started to question the authorities. Blind obedience wasn’t the answer. In fact blind obedience was the road to disaster. I carried on fighting. In fact I wrote to the publishers of the sex education book I had read telling them about the incident and they wrote to my parents saying that, in their opinion, I was a well balanced child with a highly inquisitive mind and obviously quite clever. They wished success for the future and also wrote a similar letter to my headmaster, who called me into his study and gave me another six of the best. I was also sent back to the child guidance clinic. This was 1952 in a well known Scottish school.

Penthouse: Tell us about your background, John.

Lindsay: My father was Jewish and my mother was a Catholic, so I got a grounding in various religions including Protestantism at school. I came to the conclusion that they were all crap. My own personal religion comes down to the belief that if you don’t do your fellow man—and by that I mean woman as well-any harm and you help others who need help, the old, the infirm and children; then that suffices. I was the eldest in a family of seven. My father was a self-made business man, a wonderful man. He taught me respect for my fellow human beings. I’ll never forget it to this day. A man may be a dustman or a famous film star but “a man’s a man for a’ that,” as my national poet Rabbie Burns said. To which my father added the advice that if I ever in my life met someone who wielded great power or authority then I was to remember that they also wiped their arse on the toilet. Years later when I was an official photographer at a Buckingham Palace do and I met the Queen I remembered my old dad’s words. Before settling down and marrying my mother my father was a wall of death rider in a circus. I can honestly say I had a happy childhood. My parents weren’t too well off when I was born-just at the end of the depression years. There was a time when my father’s shops had been smashed in some anti-semitic riots. His business was ruined and he used to go out busking in the streets. Why did they smash his shops? Because Jews were feared. Society is based on fear. I’ve learnt that since I’ve grown up. Certainly politics and religion are based on it. A certain amount of fear is, I suppose, necessary in order to deter criminals.

Penthouse: But according to certain elements in the judiciary, you are a criminal. Do you feel like a criminal, as you go about

Lindsay: No, but I’ll tell you exactly who l feel like. I feel like someone who, 200 years ago dabbled in love potions and folk remedies. A wizard or a warlock. A male witch. The persecution of pornographers like me really reminds me of a witch hunt. I think anyone in England who works for sexual freedom and permissiveness is the modern witch or warlock. It’s almost the same kind of religious persecution that’s levelled at us, you know. I wonder what role Lord Longford and Mary Whitehouse would have played in, say, 17th century England? Might they not have been witch-hunters? I’ll give you an example from my own background of religious indoctrination. My father
was an orthodox Jew. Consequently I was brought up in a home where pork was regarded as unclean. And here I am now, a 37 year-old adult male, and the sight and the smell of pork makes me physically ill. Yet there’s no logic to that-not with modern refrigeration. I think that a lot of people have grown up having similarly been sexually indoctrinated. At an early age their parents conveyed to them the impression that sex was dirty and unclean. So now they have hangups about sex.

Penthouse: What was your first job, John, when you left school?

Lindsay: I left school at 18 and then studied at Glasgow School of Art. I was very interested in the lifeclass and thought it was a very difficult subject, so I hired a model myself. My mother, having had all that trouble at school over me, was very pleased that I had actually brought a girl home. So the model and I went up to my room. I asked her to take all her clothes off and I started to sketch her. Downstairs my mum decided to make us some tea and cakes and bring it upstairs. She waltzed through the door of my room with a big tray and all these goodies on it, saw this naked girl and dropped the lot on the floor. Crash!

After the Art School I joined the Daily Record in Glasgow, working as a press photographer. Through that I met Miss Scotland who became my firat wife. I remember phoning home and telling my mother I was married. She fainted. My father came on the phone and the first thing he said was: “Is she Jewish?” “Well, no. not actually.” So he told me: “I never want to speak to you again”. Subsequently they became very fond of the girl. However, I divorced her. I was far too young.

I was sent to London to work on the Daily Mirror, then the Express, doing more and more fashion work and pin-ups. Then I joined Vogue on a two-year contract. The first year was OK but then I started having real problems with the models.

Penthouse: What kind of problems?

Lindsay: They made me impotent.

Penthouse: Why was that?

Lindsay: What happened was that the girls got very used to me and stopped bothering to use the changing rooms. They d come in early in the morning with their hair in curlers, they’d be shaving under their arms, plucking their moustaches. … Half an hour later they’d be beautiful fashion models and I’d be photographing them. But they’d completely lost their mystery for me. I went to a psychiatrist and he said: “It’s your job. Change it.” So I did

Penthouse: To what?

Lindsay: Disc jockey on a pirate ship. Penthouse: That must have removed the problem.

Lindsay: It did that. It was an interesting time. For the first time I came up against the Establishment. Radio Nord See was broadcasting off the Essex coast giving the people what they wanted, pop music and plenty of it. I devised a poster of Wilson dressed up like Mao Tse Tung and called it “Chairman Wilson”. Everybody was arrested. I went back into photography after that.

Penthouse: So how did you get into glamour photography?

Lindsay: By an accident. There was a model who became world famous and I was .. knocking her off at the time. I don’t want to mention her name. I did some nude studies of her and somebody saw them. He took them and sold them abroad for good money of which I got 60%. So I thought, if that kind of money is to be made from pictures of girls without their clothes on, why am I shooting fashion? I thought, that’s the business. Find girls. Take their clothes off. Shoot them. I even worked for Penthouse.

Penthouse: How did you get into the blue move business?

Lindsay: I had a fashion advertising studio in Covent Garden and the premises next door were taken by two guys. We didn’t know anything about them but we did notice that a lot of girls visited them. We eventually learnt that they were in blue movies so we used to borrow their movies to show to our clients on Friday afternoons. They were very successful sessions.

At the same time as I was shooting for English girlie magazines I was also working for Dutch and Scandinavian firms. So l’d say to the girl: “Now I’ll need some shots for abroad. So open your legs, Pull your fanny apart with your fingers and stick this vibrator up.” l’d get a very hot shot. One of the guys next door, John Darby, a lovely guy, knew about this and asked me if I could get some of the girls to make films, blue films. I told him that as long as it was legal l’d do it. So I checked with my lawyer. This was in 1966 roughly. My lawyer said that to make blue films must be illegal but he didn’t know exactly how and why. So I went to Scotland Yard. To see the Obscene Publications Squad. I saw two members. Detective Inspector Laurence and Detective Constable Chamberlain. I explained the proposition that had been put to me and asked what the legal position was. They said that six weeks previously a new law had been passed legalising homosexuality. But the Act just said “consenting adults in private” can do what they like sexually. As far as they could see this meant that I was at liberty to shoot blue films in private as long as I used consenting adults. They went on to say that, however, if I published or sold the films in this country they’d come down like a ton of bricks on me. I thanked them, shook hands and went back to John Darby and told him: “We’re in business. I’ll shoot the films and hand them over to you. What you do with them then is your problem, I’m in the clear”… From then on I was churning them out every weekend.

Penthouse: How many blue films have you made?

Lindsay: 3,824.

Panthouse: !!

Lindsay: They are shot on 16 mm usually 60 minutes edited down to 20. Sound, if any, is added afterwards. And they are in colour.

Penthouse: You must be the most profic blue moviemaker in the country. So can you tell me why blue movies aren’t better? I mean better made, more imaginative.

Lindsay: Because the audience doesn’t demand better made blue movies, I suppose. The average blue film is three minutes introduction followed by four minutes sex. And it continues from there with more sex. And yet more sex. That is what the guy buying it expects. He doesn’t want art. But if blue movies were fully legalised, then the buyers would, eventually, start demanding —and getting — better quality. Because there would be so many people turning them out that the public would become more discerning.

Penthouse: Out of all the blue movies you’ve shot, do you have any favourites?

Lindsay: I remember a couple who were among my favourites. I had difficulty shooting the film I was laughing so much. It was called The Kinky Vicar. He comes to visit a sick young lady who subsequently passes away. Now the girl playing that part was definitely one of the old school. The “open your-legs-and-think-of-England” school.

Penthouse: Well, what was she doing in a blue movie?

Lindsay: Nothing, that was the point. So we decided because she was so hopeless a showing any emotion, she would have to play a dead person. The kinky vicar is a necrophiliac and uses a banana on this dead girl. The nurse comes in and reprimands him. So he has the nurse instead. But they have to remove the body from the bed. So they put it in the coffin complete with banana.

The other funny film I remember was shot on Hampstead Heath and called Jailbreak. The plot is that three prisoners break out of Wormwood Scrubs. We had them dressed in suits with arrows on them and big balls and chains. Hilarious. The prisoners are digging a trench under the watchful eye of the warder. One finds a gold coin and calls the warder over to look. The warder bends down to inspect it and the prisoner bashes him over the head with his ball. Then the police arrive. The real police. Panic stations. Only the actor playing the warder is deaf. Someone’s shouting in his ear: “The Old Bill are coming I Run!” but he doesn’t take any notice. He’s got his eyes closed as well because he’s meant to be unconscious. Everybody else scrambles off lugging their balls and chains. Except this character who has to explain to the police what he’s doing lying like a corpse and dressed like a prison warder in a shallow grave on Hampstead Heath.

Penthouse: What sort of girls make blue movies?

Lindsay: They come from every kind of background. They are nurses, secretaries, students out to make a bit of money, in fact they are everything except prostitutes. The reason is that the life of a prostitute makes them hard. Hard females are not suitable for blue films. The main theme in blue films, I would say, is the seduction of innocence. So the girls have to look like “nice” girls, sweet girls, girl-next-door-girls. Fresh-faced, innocent young girls but real girls who can be fucked. And who are fucked.

Penthouse: The other question that people ask is what motivates them to make blue films.

Lindsay: Some people believe that it’s drink or drugs; that the girls are somehow unwilling. That’s a total misconception. Neither is it money. You can’t earn a fortune making blue movies; that’s another misconception. No, the girls’ motive is sheer sexual enjoyment. A blue movie gives a girl an excuse to enjoy herself sexually with total freedom. You see, you say to a girl: “I will pay you x pounds to make a blue movie. You will have to make love to a man whom you don’t know but who’s clean, young and attractive.” By saying that, you take the onus of responsibility away from the girl. Because it’s different when a girl goes to a dance hall and meets a man who asks her for a dance, buys her a drink and sees her home. There she has to decide whether or not she’ll allow him to have sex with her. She’s probably been told by her mother that if she allows a man to have what he says he wants, then he’s going to think she’s cheap. I mean what a situation for a human being to be in I Who is the poor girl to believe? She doesn’t have to make such crippling decisions when she’s making a blue movie. In a blue movie you are, in effect, saying to a female —or a male—“We are giving you a licence to enjoy yourself sexually. And not only that, but we’re paying you as well”. This is a fact and I’m fascinated by it. I’ve had complaints from girls on films that the plot doesn’t call for them to have a fuck. Yes, I’ve been taken aside by two girls who were doing a lesbian scene for me and I’ve thought: “Oh, they’re going to complain that they’re not getting paid enough,” but not a bit of it, they’ve said: ” We don’t mind what we’re doing but we want a decent fuck” .

There’s another reason why girls like acting in blue movies. A blue moviemaker will insist on foreplay before the actors get down to the intercourse scene. So often a girl gets her rocks off for the first time when she’s making a blue movie.

Penthouse: Are you saying that a lot of young girls aren’t getting satisfactory sex from their partners?

Lindsay: I would say, and I don’t know if I’m condemning myself here, that I really do believe that women in Britain are getting a raw deal, because the average British male just chases crumpet, to use the common term. He goes to his football match and then goes off to Soho to chase crumpet. What he’s doing is he’s exploiting women, he’s using women.

I know I sound like some mad womens’ liberationist, I’m not, but I believe that the female has a bigger sexual appetite than the male. I’m speaking from experience here. I’ll be totally explicit. Once I took a beautiful little bird away for the weekend. l arrived on the Friday evening, fucked her all night, fucked her Saturday morning and at night and come Sunday morning I was totally shattered. I couldn’t have raised a hard-on to save my life. And that beautiful little bird still wanted more. To the extent that she was asking me what was wrong ! So I think that women get a raw deal because men use them as sex objects but don’t really satisfy them. I’d like to see the male prostitute who could go with 40 women in a night. But a female can have that amount. Easy. So, you see, there’s no way that you can compete with women sexually.

Penthouse: Some men seem to go to bed with women simply in order to boast about it to their male friends afterwards. Which is really the wrong reason for doing it. Lindsay: It’s a sad thing but the male sex is really terribly, terribly insecure. Penthouse: So making a blue film must be much harder on the male participants than the female?

Lindsay: Certainly. The biggest problem we have in the blue film industry —and it really is a worldwide industry—is getting men who can act in blue films. There’s no shortage-of girls. I can get any amount of girls who want to be in the films; pretty girls, beautiful girls, plain girls, any kind. But I would say that out of a thousand men only one can make it in a blue film. The rest, no way. The point is that a man fucking a girl on film is going to be embarrassed by all these professionals watching his every move. And he’s thinking: “Have they seen bigger ones?” And “Is the director satisfied with my performance?” The girl’s alright, she just has a space between her legs to be filled.

Penthouse: Doesn’t that go back to what I was saying earlier, that masculine sexuality seems to depend on the approval of other men?

Lindsay: You’re so right. I’ll give you an example. In America I made a blue film which has become famous, called Hung Like A Horse. The man concerned has a disease — elephantitis. His penis is massive by any human standards. Its circumference alone is probably 12 inches. And its length!! Anyhow he cannot get an erection. Mind you, he doesn’t need to. But no man will act beside him in a blue movie. They feel the competition’s too strong. Yet, really, that guy has less of a satisfactory sex life than you or I. All this fuss about the size of one’s penis is so irrelevant anyway. Anyone who thinks he’s the world’s greatest lover should take a stroll down to the nearest maternity clinic and watch a baby being born. That’ll soon change his mind. Because no matter how big your penis is, a baby is bigger.

Penthouse: Your trials in Birmingham in October 1974 first brought you to the attention of the public at large. There you pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiring to publish obscene films. These were films you had shot, after hours, in Aston Manor Comprehensive School, using young models dressed as schoolgirls, the school caretaker and an ex-head boy and utilising such authentic locations as the girls’ changing rooms, the art room and the teachers’ common room. In the end, as the world knows, you were acquitted, after a retrial, by a jury. But in one of the trials you said that the reason why you accepted the low sum of £25 per film was because you were against censorship for adults. What do you think is wrong with the current state of censorship in this country?

Lindsay: Censorship is, to me, a misuse of power. You give people power over you and they will suppress you. None of our moral guardians have actually been appointed by the public they pretend to serve. Some are self appointed like Mrs Whitehouse. Then there’s the Director of Public Prosecutions. The public didn’t appoint him. These people are the extremists, not me. As a pornographer I am not saying that everybody needs porn, everybody must have porn. No way. But the anti-porn mob are saying that no one needs porn, that all porn must be stamped out. Now that is simply not true. Porn has therapeutic and educational uses as well as its use as an aid to lovemaking-or masturbation. All I am saying is that those who want porn should be allowed to have it and those who loathe it should not have it thrust at them. I think that’s a more reasonable position than that of the anti-porn fanatics.

Penthouse: What’s your answer to the charge that exposure to pornography can “deprave and corrupt” certain sections of the population?

Lindsay: Not so long ago there was a very famous man who believed that a certain section of the population was indeed totally depraved and corrupt. And what’s worse he was convinced that they would deprave and corrupt the rest of the population. So he exterminated them. Six million of them. His name was Adolf Hitler.

Penthouse: But are you for the total abolition of censorship? Do you believe

that nothing should be censored? Just now you mentioned Adolf Hitler. Now’s there’s a beautifully produced German colour magazine called “SS Heroes” which depicts male models dressed up as SS-Hitler’s thugs-torturing women. Now of course, they’re not really torturing the girls, it’s all simulated, but do you think that kind of magazine should be allowed? It’s pandering to people’s basest, most fascist instincts. It worries me, because when I saw a copy of this mag, I must admit it turned me on. And no way do I want to be turned on by fascism.

Lindsay: Yes, I know the magazine. But I still say that nothing should be censored. I don’t like pictures of little girls and infants sucking old men off. Or pictures of women having it with animals. In fact I walked off a film I was hired to shoot in Holland because it showed sex between a mother and her 12-year-old daughter. I thought that was wrong because a 12-year-old is in no position to make up her mind. But I don’t believe that censorship should or can be imposed from outside. The only censorship that is really worthwhile is self censorship.

Penthouse: But aren’t there people in society who simply cannot be trusted to exercise self restraint—rapists and murderers? Hasn’t society a right to protect itself against such anti-social elements? Lindsay: I agree. But it’s not enough to say that. People must be re-educated so that they don’t wish to harm their fellow humans. Penthouse: I’m playing devil’s advocate here, John. Even a magazine like “SS Heroes” must use consenting adults-unlike the real SS. Most people are able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, after all. Talking of this, do you think that most judges are out of touch with the reality of public opinion? Justice Wien at your first trial in Birmingham told the defendants who had—unlike you—pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiring to publish obscene articles that they had “degraded themselves beyond measure” and that what they had done-acted in blue movies-was “manifestly obscene” . His jury, however, were unable to agree with him in your case and another jury acquitted you.

Lindsay: I would like to state quite categorically that I. John Lindsay, believe that all judges are totally out of step with public opinion on the issue of pornography. They come from such different backgrounds to the rest of us. I didn’t go to a boy’s boarding school. Did you go to Eton? No boy ever came up to me at school and said: “John, what a lovely arse you’ve got, can I sleep with you tonight?” Homosexuality is a noted facet of English Public Schools. Most people in this country didn’t go to Eton or to Cambridge or Oxford. We’re a different race. I don’t think they should be allowed to sit in judgement on us, they’re so different from us. And they’re so old, judges. Just sitting up in their coffins. Old men and old values.

Penthouse: John. you’ve got away with a lot in your time. Take the Birmingham trial. You were acquitted of making obscene films, but you must have been doing something wrong, even if it was only trespassing in Aston Manor School.

Lindsay: I did something terribly wrong. I cocked a snook at the Establishment. I even made one film, which formed part of the evidence against me at Birmingham, in which models dressed as nuns masturbated with crucifixes. At the Birmingham trial—the second one where I was acquitted—I spoke to the jury. I said: ” You as adult males, or your sons could, at any time, get a brown envelope from your government saying that you must put on a uniform and go over to Northern Ireland to sort out the IRA.” And, guess what?—I really had their attention now and Lord Justice Ashworth was glowering at me—“You could get a bullet through your head. You or your son. He’s old enough at 18 to be killed in Her Majesty’s Forces. But, according to the prosecution, he’s not old enough to come and watch a blue film. Nobody is. What kind of definition of the responsibilities of the average citizen is that? ” And they agreed with me. They must have done because they acquitted me.

At this point Penny Lindsay, John’s attractive wife, who had recently given birth to two fine twin daughters, joined in the conversation to point out that the foreman of the jury had been a law student at Birmingham University and had made his personal decision to acquit John after seeing some soft core films on general release. He felt that genuine hard core movies at least gave the audience what they were seeking, whereas softcore only left them feeling frustrated. He had also said that at the beginning of the trial, every member of the jury, except him, had already decided that Lindsay was guilty, on the evidence of the press publicity that the previous trial, which had ended with a hung jury, had received. It took him some time to persuade them that they were not there to prejudge the trial.

Penthouse: John, you’ve also made feature films, of which the best known are The Love Pill, The Wife Swappers and The Pornbrokers. Didn’t you have a famous row over the latter film with Stephen Murphy who was then the film censor? .

Lindsay: The man called me a liar over The Pornbrokers. I had made a genuine documentary film about the porno industry, answering Lord Longford’s report. Longford knows nothing about pornography. Anyway, Murphy wouldn’t believe that I could get ordinary girls to do what they did in that film. According to him, it was all faked. My reply was to ask him if he had a daughter. Yes, he had, he said. I said: ” Mr Murphy, it doesn’t matter how they are brought up, I bet if I talked to your daughter I could make blue films with her” . His reply to that was to tell me to get out of his office. He hasn’t spoken to me since. I eventually had to apply to the G LC for a London X certificate for The Pornbrokers. It was shown in the Charing Cross Road and at the Jacey, Trafalgar Square and did good business.

Penthouse: Tell us about your latest brush with the law.

Lindsay: It’s total crap. I haven’t even been charged formally yet. But the charge will be something like ” being in possession of obscene articles for gain”. These are the films I am selling to members of the public at the London Blue Movie Centre at 37 Berwick Street W1, in Soho. I am also showing these films at my club at 15/18 Great Newport Street, London WC2. They are the films which juries acquitted of the charge of being obscene in Birmingham and in Portsmouth. So I am going to make legal history because this makes it the second time I will have been charged with substantially the same offence, despite being acquitted once! This is contrary to all the rules of British justice which state, reasonably enough, that a man may not be tried twice for the same offence if he’s been acquitted once. A lady magistrate acquitted me of this charge, at Wells Street Court, on February 9 this year, but the prosecution successfully applied for leave to take the farce to a divisional court made up of three High Court judges. My defence however will take the case to the ultimate court of appeal in the land, which is the House of Lords. Because if I’m prosecuted again, it will mean a very serious erosion of the freedom which we all enjoy under the law. It’s up to people like you, Andrew, and your magazine, to point out to the public the significance of such moves by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Penthouse: John Lindsay, you’re a happily married man ….

Lindsay: Very happily ….

Penthouse: … With a pretty and engaging wife, but doesn’t close proximity in your work to naked, young and attractive girls put a strain on your marriage?

Lindsay: No.

Penthouse: You’ve got two twin daughters, five months old, now they’re going to grow up and eventually they’ll become young 16-year-old girls; probably, coming from such handsome parents, they’ll be very good looking. Now someone, the John Lindsay of the future, is going to approach them with an offer to star in a blue movie. How are you going to feel when this happens?

Lindsay: I’d like to feel that I’m going to bring up my daughters to be nice girls and to bear in mind that they, as women, are much stronger than men. If they want to act in blue movies, then they must do It. I will not suppress them, providing they harm no one

Penthouse: John Lindsay, thank you very much for being so frank.