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Middle-aged confessions: 'What did you know about pornography at school?'

It has been blamed for turning men who watch it into violent criminals, for giving children unrealistic and potentially dangerous ideas about sex, for being degrading to women and for actually ruining our real-world sex lives. 

And now a new study has called for the potentially harmful impact of pornography on children to be addressed in the classroom. The research, carried out by Plan International, revealed that the majority of British adults believe teaching children how to deal with porn and sexting should be an integral part of sex education

The reality is that these days, most children will have seen online pornography before they leave primary school and will have been asked for a sexual digital image of themselves by a friend before the end of secondary school. 

Gone are the days when the closest you got to seeing porn was an old copy of Playboy hidden behind the bike sheds.

We asked a group of 50-something parents to give us their memories of the first times they encountered porn. Warning: it's all naughty novels and racy catalogues from here on. Oh how times have changed...

 

Get your mitts on German magazines

"A stash of exotic German magazines found in bedroom of the hippy lodgers living at my friend Robert's house made very interesting reading - and were then sold on at school," reveals one middle-aged parent.

And if you can't get your hands on a genuinely racy title, it seems any German mag will do: "My uncle was a German speaker and subscribed to Stern news magazine, in which there were some moderately racy pictures.

"The magazines were not hidden so could easily fall under the gaze of young visitors who also happened to be learning German at school and therefore had good reason to flick through them."

Or failing that, a naturist magazine

"The boys in year five and six [so roughly aged 10] at primary school used to bring Health and Efficiency, which I seem to remember was the magazine of the naturist community.

"It had lots of pics of slightly saggy people playing badminton/ board games/ camping. Not that I ever looked at the pictures - my friend told me what was in them."

Even a catalogue will do

"My brothers were very partial to the ladies underwear pages in the Littlewood catalogue."

Fact: convent school girls have the rudest books

"At St Mary's convent we were all addicted to a historical romance series, the heroine of which was called Marianne. She was always in trouble and it was very racy, although it stopped short of the actual deed.

"But we were marked forever by scenes such as the one where she ended up in a harem, where the servants prepared her for night of passion by 'anointing her secret parts with all the perfumes of Araby'.

"It left a strong impression. And made the real thing just a tad disappointing."

The hardcore stuff is in the library

"In year eight, we used to read the rude bits from the Godfather in the playground, which caused much tittering. Jackie Collins was also very popular.

"I think there might have been a book called Theodora - featuring eastern promise.

"I also seem to remember a racy series called Angelique, which was much in demand. Now, that was educational. Pre- revolutionary French romps - a playground special!"

Even the encyclopedia...

"In the third form, I do recall spending many a lunch-hour in the school library checking out Venus of Urbino by Titian in Encyclopedia Britannia. Funny, it always just fell open on that page." 

Watch the librarian doesn't catch you

"I remember the humiliation of being stopped from taking out a library book because it was for over eighteens only. I was with my dad at the time. The horror!"

They'll only sell them on anyway...

"By the fifth form, unofficial convention was that you could go behind the bike sheds for a cigarette at break times and browse through copies of Rustler and Parade (always bought by 'somebody else,' obviously).  

"Once a term, our geography teacher Mr Pinner would do a surprise raid - ostensibly to confiscate the cigs. But he also confiscated the porn.

"Years later, in the pub, he told me he just used to hand it around the staff room. We were an all-boys grammar with a completely male staff apart from Mrs Jones and Miss Phillips - who were both the subject of far more interest than anything in the mags. But that's another story..."

Make sure you hide your material 

"My parents were spring cleaning and my dad went into my older brother's room. When he lifted the carpets he found wall-to-wall porn mags. He told my brother to get rid of them before our mum saw.

"They were bizarre and told stories with pictures. Like Jackie - but nobody had any clothes on. Never seen the like since.

"Where did he hide them then? In the middle of my Football Monthly and Goal mags."

Don't expect to find much for women

"I never heard of anything specifically produced for women, which doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't any but it certainly wasn't to be found on the top shelf W H Smith."

"Of course Cosmo did the first male centrefolds - Burt Reynolds and Paul du Feu in 1972 - but other than that, there weren't any racy mags for girls."

Oh and, boys, the real thing isn't like the pictures

"I remember my total shock at college discovering girls did not wear matching bra and knickers like in the porn mags."