Ashley Hames: Confessions of a Sex Reporter

When a certain Robert Birkett led Ofcom into an anti-obscenity witch-hunt, he could not have envisioned where it would leave his enemy, Sin Cities documentarian Ashley Hames. Now a leper of the industry, the former host of one of TV’s most explicit accounts of sexual deviance brings his protestations to the stage. In an effort to justify getting his scrotum nailed to a plank, Hames presents an arsenal of anecdotal evidence and nauseating footage. He’s keen to point out that he’s no stand-up, so it’s unsurprising that this takes the form of a mildly amusing verbal essay rather than a comedy set.

The formula is simple: Hames cues up an unthinkably perverted clip, the audience shudders, then he counters by detailing why he deemed it necessary to have a bottle of red wine skooshed into his colon. For a man who deals in such depravity, he comes across as remarkably pleasant. He’s clearly not a natural performer and he repeatedly stumbles over technical pitfalls, but he possesses a gawky, middle-class charm. Consequently, when he declares himself a victim – of manipulative corporate execs, his own careerism and reactionary morals – the audience’s horror almost turns to sympathy.

The flaw in Hames’s testimony is not its credibility, but its mode of presentation. Whilst he merely flirts with intelligent discussion, he also refrains from indulging those who inevitably turn up expecting an hour of unadulterated smut. Though a pleasing mix of entertainment and degeneracy, the end result is frustratingly noncommittal to either approach.