Make your own porn film

The UK Department of Health has launched www.privatedickmovie.com, a website where you can watch short films that look like old ’70s porn flicks. You can create your own version by using your name and those of your friends as characters in the movies. After personalising the film, you can then send it to your friends.

A government department promoting porn - is this another example of the degenerate West? No, it’s part of a campaign to encourage safe sex. On the official campaign website Condom Essential Wear, it says: “Sex is great. But if you don’t protect yourself, it could soon stop being as much fun.” The aim is to “make condoms a fun and essential part of your sex life.”

Sex education in the UK really has come a long way since those TV ads in the early ’80s that featured a big monolith in a thunderstorm and a doomsday voice warning about AIDS. I recall being mystified by that ad, which told you nothing directly about AIDS or what to do to protect yourself - it seemed to be the darker, meaner version of the Monty Python “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” sketch.

This new campaign is cheeky and fresh and is clearly aimed at a very modern audience that would not give the time of day to being preached at. It’s in the same vein as the Colgate Smile campaign (discussed in my other post of today) in that it aims to make something rather dull and dutiful fun - and even a bit sexy.