VISUAL STIMULATION

AS A small boy I used to look forward to getting a haircut. Nothing to do with my locks - they were as unruly then as they are sparse now.

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A visit to Sam the Barber was not just an outing, but also offered a chance to sneak a peek inside the sticky covers of the risqué magazines that were provided for the more mature clientele.

Copping an eyeful required a small degree of deception. My mother would drop me at the barber and go to the supermarket. I had to be discrete in my surreptitious wondering at the delights on offer within the well-thumbed pages of Pix and Playboy.

I did not always succeed and took the risk of being thoroughly scolded for my choice of reading material. After all, I should have been browsing Dennis the Menace, Donald Duck or the readily available Wheels.

Nothing has changed.

Sixty years later instead of my mother's stern counselling, it is nowadays my beloved who is astonished at my seemingly bottomless appetite for car porn.

Digital media offers so many opportunities to waste time. It is amazing that anyone gets anything done, with all the distractions that are within reach and as close as your mobile phone.

Where do all these clips and snippets come from?

I have spent most of my working life making countless radio and television programmes, spent some time at work on fancy films and many years writing articles for newspapers and magazines. Sometimes what I was making was very serious and sometimes it was silly. Admittedly, the serious stuff could end up being pretty silly, but that is a story for a different publication!