Let's go back to the innocence of the 1970s, when the raunchiest films available in Ireland were Russ Mayer epics such as Supervixens and Beneath the Valley of the Supervixens and the British Confessions of . . . series. Sometimes the lurid posters outside Dublin cinemas showing this harmless rubbish were doctored so passers-by wouldn't be offended - a bikini bottom would be turned into a knee-length skirt with a few dabs of black paint or a low cleavage transformed into a polo-neck jumper.
Confessions were saucy comedies starring the ebullient Robin Askwith as chirpy Timmy Lea. Gap-toothed and gangling, this unlikeliest of sex magnets was often to be found cowering in wardrobes in his underpants, for the series was rooted not in the soft porn of Los Angeles, but in the world of tittersome British seaside comic postcards and the Carry On films.
Confessions of a Window Cleaner in 1974 was followed by Confessions of a Pop Performer the following year, then Confessions of a Driving Instructor and Confessions From a Holiday Camp. They were mostly directed by Norman Cohen, and two versions of each film were made. The one shown in Britain and the rest of Europe had some mild nudity; in the version allowed here, underwear was kept on at all times. It was not unknown for raincoated men to travel to Belfast for the "better" version.
Timmy lacked confidence and worldly wisdom, and such humour as there was came from his being lured into bed by scheming women. Any drama was usually the result of an enraged husband or boyfriend finding the couple in a compromising situation, a rage seldom mollified by Timmy's pathetic bleats of innocence.
Supporting Askwith was a regular cast of stalwart British comedy character actors, most somewhat past their sell-by date. The films were rich in robust music hall-style mugging and bellowing, and were never, ever, remotely sexy. Nevertheless, for a few years, Askwith was Britain's leading male comedy sex symbol, starring in the films No Sex Please We're British, Queen Kong, Stand Up Virgin Soldiers and Let's Get Laid as well as the Confessions series.
He was born in Lancashire in 1950 and educated at public school (until expelled, he claims, for holding up a post office). After some stage experience, he made his film dΘbut in Lindsay Anderson's If. He was in over 30 films but is best-known for Confessions. Askwith had no illusions about the quality of the series. "Ibsen it was not," he said, years later.
When he decided to go back to the stage in the late 1970s, he found that he was trapped by his cinema image of incompetent sexual plaything and toured in productions with such titles as The Further Confessions of a Window Cleaner and Casanova's Last Stand. Some of these plays reached Ireland. According to Askwith, Who Goes Bare increased its business by 130 per cent in Cork, but when the farce reached the old Pavilion Theatre in D·n Laoghaire nobody turned up because (he outrageously claims) the council insisted that the posters read "Robin Askwith in Hamlet".
Over recent years his public appearances have been few - a small film role here, an unsuccessful TV series there. Askwith, in real life as confident and urbane as Timmy was hapless and dithering, now lives on the island of Gozo, near Malta, where his interests include long-distance swimming and yacht racing. In 1999 he wrote his autobiography. It was, of course, called Confessions of Robin Askwith.
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Robin Askwith