Swingers 3 Read online

  Over the next two days we must have made over a hundred phone calls. Ben had wanted to film an actual party until we explained that a camera in the middle of a swingers party would result in a stampede or a riot, or both. But we did manage to round up about thirty people who did not mind being on telly to make up a mock party. We weren’t really cheating because these people were genuine members and the action was every bit as real as an authentic party night.

  The team that LWT sent up from London was double the size of the one that met us at the service station. There was now a make up girl, a production assistant, a sound guy, and a goffa, or dog’s body. They filmed us in our home, they filmed us in the club, they filmed us going to the shops, they filmed us walking the streets of Sheffield, then came the party scenes. Ben asked everyone to do what they would do at a normal La Chambre party, so we put some music on and sat back to watch the expressions on the film crews faces when people began to strip off and have sex. Ben nearly collapsed.

  “Stop, stop!” he shouted. “We can’t film that.” Sandy was almost choking on her coffee.

  “Oh my Lord,” she said, “it’s like a porn film.” I had to laugh; both Marie and I had sensed that they were unprepared for the sexy bit.

  “We’ll re-position the cameras,” said Ben. “Can’t they wear boxer shorts and knickers?”

  “Do you want it as it is or made up?”

  “It’s got to be the real deal,” interrupted Sandy.

  “Then no boxers or knickers,” I said.

  “Okay, different camera angles and change the lighting” ordered Ben. From then on, they were careful not to film anything they could not edit out later. They moved from room to room and ended up in the dungeon. They interviewed a few of our members and ended up filming me and Marie sat in the Boudoir. This would be the final and most searching interview.

  As the sound guy fixed microphones under our clothes, I asked Sandy how many people would see this.

  “Well the whole London area of course,” she said, “then with a subject as hot as this, it’s bound to get picked up by the regional stations Tyne Tees, Yorkshire, Granada, Scottish and the rest.” She thought for a minute and added casually, “ultimately, about twenty million people I expect.” I looked at Marie, she looked at me and we both gave a collective “Fuck!”

  Ben suddenly started counting down from ten. Sandy, who was conducting the interview held the mike up to her mouth, smiled at us and when the count got down to nought began the interview. I remember wondering at the time why we couldn’t have done this fifteen or twenty years ago when we were in our prime and looked good, not now. I’m the wrong side of fifty and Marie forty nine. Sandy asked all the usual questions, ‘Why did you become swingers? How can you watch someone you love having sex with someone else?’ etc etc. Then she hit me with the big one: ‘How many women have you had sex with over the years, since becoming a swinger?’ I froze, twenty million people would be waiting for my answer and to be honest I did not know how many. ‘Well how many in a year, then?’ Sandy was not letting this one go. I thought hard. We swing every Saturday and sometimes in the week as well, even though some of these swinging sessions were with the same women, mostly Sue or Rachel, there were times when I would have multiple partners in one night. For instance, it’s not uncommon to have two or three different women at a standard house party, my record is seven. So over a year it would probably work out at about fifty different women. Sandy must have been good at maths at school because she immediately did the calculations. ‘So if you have been swinging for twenty years now, you’ve made love with a thousand women.

  “I must have,” I answered.

  “And Marie, you have made love with a thousand different men?”

  “Plus a good percentage of their wives!” said Marie cool as a cucumber.

  Sandy turned to me again. “Are you a good lover Barry?” she asked smiling.

  “You would have to ask the women!” I answered.

  “All one thousand of them!” laughed Sandy.

  The interview went on for a few minutes, with Sandy probing for juicy titbits and us not being defensive, but maybe a little coy. Mind you, it’s hard to be coy when you’ve just admitted to shagging a thousand women on nationwide TV. Eventually Sandy ended the interview. Ben shouted, “It’s a rap,” and that was it. Sandy, Ben and the team stayed over on the Saturday night to attend the party. It was a good turn out and a fun packed night. Both admitted that it was nothing like they had imagined or had been led to believe. Sandy even said that if she didn’t live in London she would be a regular. It had been three days of solid filming to produce one forty minute documentary. Even today after doing countless shoots I’m always astonished at just how much film is shot only to be discarded later.

  It was almost five months before the documentary was screened. On the night it went out we were sat at home with Danny, Sue, Dave and Rachel. LWT had kindly sent us a copy a couple of weeks previously, so we knew we were not in for any surprises. It turned out to be a factual, well made film without a hint of sensationalism. For the first time ever, swingers had been depicted as normal people and not some kind of weird sect.

  We all watched in disbelief as the club was shown in all its glory, even giving us a ten second shot of the telephone number on the sign outside. When our interview came on Marie had to cover her face in embarrassment, but it came over really well and when it was over Dave raised a toast “To Barry, Marie and La Chambre, long may they reign.”

  We had hardly put the glasses to our lips when the business line began ringing. It was a couple from Highgate in London asking how to join the club, after that a couple from Reading, then a couple from Kent. It went on like that for over an hour until Marie said to take the receiver off the hook so that we could entertain our guests.

  Even while making love with Rachel I was itching to start answering the phone again. I hated the thought of loosing so many important calls. I needn’t have worried; the following morning they began again and did not stop for a month. Again the club had a sudden influx of members, but it was not just swingers that were calling us.

  Other television companies began ringing us too, people like the Trisha Show, Five Live and Kilroy. I even went on a gameshow with Liza Tarbuck, who was a fun girl to know. We did more shoots for the big women’s magazines and newspapers like The Observer and The Independent. It was a wild ride and we felt almost like ‘z’ listers. People would recognise us in supermarkets and come over to talk, some even asked for autographs.

  It was bizarre and over the next few years La Chambre went from strength to strength. Membership hit the ten thousand mark, we had introduced a fetish night, a bi night and a Sunday chill out party. Life was good and even the shows like Five Live shot in Nottingham, where they had set Marie and I up against an audience of social workers and church-goers, gave us a buzz, we would fight our corner at every opportunity and we also had the dubious distinction of being bumped off Good Morning Britain with Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton. We were in the hotel waiting for a car to take us to the studio when they rang to tell us that Paul McCartney and his new bride Heather Mills had taken our spot at the last minute. That was a shame as we had intended to, tongue in cheek, ask Philip Schofield and Fern Britton what they were doing that night at the end of the interview and live on air. But it’s still one of our claims to fame when we tell people we were bumped by a Beatle.

  By around 2004, La Chambre was firmly established and swinging had become if not accepted then certainly tolerated. A new relaxed era was beginning and now other clubs had begun to open, buoyed on by our success. Many didn’t last, as the people who owned them were just opportunists who wanted the money. But a few got a foothold and we had our first real opposition. It was bittersweet for us; we had been the ones to pave the way, we had been the ones to take all the flack, we had been the ones who had made it possible for other clubs to open relatively easily. Where were these people when we were pacing the bedroom floor at thre
e in the morning, or when we lived in fear of being arrested. On the other hand we wanted to drive the scene forward and gain a kind of acceptance, and more swingers clubs around the country would help achieve that.

  So we looked upon our rivals with a sort of resigned benevolence, not that they had much effect on us. We were still booming and were still being courted by television companies. We shot stuff for the BBC, ITV, Sky and Scottish, as well as the regional networks like Yorkshire, Granada, Tyne Tees and Southern. An American voice on the line one Saturday morning really intrigued us. It was from the Sexcetera programme that was based in Los Angeles. They wanted to include us in the highly regarded Sexcetera series. This programme goes worldwide to a potential 200 million people. We immediately got to work making the arrangements. Putting together a mock party of around fifty people. We were surprised at how many of our members were up for this.

  Three weeks later, the six man Sexcetera team arrived at Manchester airport. Well I’m saying six men, it was three men and three women. Valerie Baber was the interviewer, and boy is she sexy. I’ll let you into a little secret about her a bit later. They arrived at the club ready for action; they didn’t want to film us at home, or walking hand in hand through country parks, all they wanted was sex scenes. For two days they filmed our people in every playroom in every position and unlike London Weekend nothing phased them.

  They knew exactly what they needed and finished off with a shot of me and Marie making out in the pool. Like the London Weekend people they stayed over to attend the weekend parties, but unlike the London Weekend crew the Sexcetera team joined in, jumping straight in on the action. Of course, our members loved it. Tracy and Scott, a regular couple of ours, screwed the Sexcetera make up lady senseless, or was it the other way around, I’m not sure. It was one hell of a night with wall to wall sex and the Sexcetera crew were right in the thick of it. Valerie Baber was lying naked in the Karma Sutra room, she saw me and motioned for me to come over. I sat beside her.

  “Barry,” she said, “with this job I’ve been all over the world: Hawaii, Australia, all over Europe, but I can honestly say this is the best time I’ve ever had.” I’m not telling you what happened next; a gentleman does not reveal such secrets.

  When Sexcetera hit the air, the club went ballistic, we began getting couples and singles from France, Holland and Germany, in fact from all over Europe. Continental couples coming to England to swing, when traditionally it had always been the other way around. We were now global. I remember sitting in a late night bar in Lanzarote years later and Sexcetera came on the telly above the bar, there we were, large as life, having sex in our pool. We got some funny looks that night I can tell you.

  By the new year of 2005 the club was the busiest it had ever been. At the weekends the queues stretched right around the building when we opened the doors. I remember we employed a magician to go along the line of people, keeping them entertained while they waited to book in. We were working every weekend until around five in the morning, sometimes not getting to bed until six or seven. Then in the week we would be up around eight to start answering the telephone which rang almost constantly, then there were the drinks to re-stock. We had recently acquired a drinks licence, the first club in England to do so. With endless meetings with printers, accountants, television producers and magazine editors it was getting too much for us. It was all becoming a little too hectic and we needed a break, so it was that we led the English invasion of the Jamaican resort of Hedonism.

  CHAPTER 9

  The British are Coming

  Kingston Airport in Jamaica was basically a long, bumpy runway surrounded by lush, green, palm tree covered hills. The airport terminal was little more than a large hut with a corrugated roof and regrettably no air conditioning. We were on our way to the resort of Hedonism at the north of the island. There were four couples: myself and Marie, Dave and Rachel and two couples from the club, Steve and Amy and Alan and Joy, both fun loving and experienced swingers. Danny and Sue could not make it, so we four couples became the vanguard for the British invasion of what was then primarily an American swingers resort.

  We piled our luggage into a trailer hitched to the back of an ancient VW Transporter and clambered in. It was a two and a half hour journey over the roughest roads I have ever seen, but we were all in a jovial mood and laughed as we bounced and bumped our way over the green mountains and deep jungled valleys. We were all pleased, not to say relieved, when the resort finally came into view and our driver said in pigeon English “Over there Hedonism, fucky fucky!” then burst into laughter.

  After the poverty we had seen on the way, Hedonism stood like a palace, with huge roman style columns stood either side of the massive glass doors. As we climbed the marble steps to the main entrance, a rush of expectation filled my stomach.

  In the huge foyer dozens of semi-naked couples and singles milled around, some clutching beach bags, some surf boards, others just chatting. It was a sexually charged atmosphere, but relaxed at the same time. We quickly booked in at reception and were shown to our rooms by a smiling porter. He walked us through the landscaped grounds, past a swimming pool full of naked people, some openly having sex, some oral sex. One tanned, buxom lady had about six guys lined up sat on the edge of the pool and was working her way along the line giving the guys blow jobs.

  We were like kids in a sweet shop, we couldn’t wait to get to our room, drop our cases and get amongst the fun. We were all in the same block and the rooms themselves were kitted out with extra large double beds and mirrors fitted to the ceiling above; a nice touch.

  After a quick unpacking session we all met outside and began exploring the complex. It was laid out in different blocks of around ten to twelve rooms per block. The landscaped gardens were well kept and teaming with exotic flowers of all colours and sizes. There were little nooks and hideaways built into the winding pathway where couples could have fun. It occurred to me that someone had put a lot of thought into this. We eventually gravitated down to the pool, which seemed to be where most of the action was taking place. In fact there were two pools, one a proper swimming pool with a bar at one end which had submerged stools for people to sit on in the warm water, and the other pool was only about two and a half feet deep all the way round with an ornate waterfall in the middle. That seemed to be the most popular.

  When we arrived it was still half full, the buxom blow job lady was sat on the edge of the pool dangling her legs in the water and looking as though butter wouldn’t melt. On the other side of the pool was a huge fat guy, he must have been around thirty stone. He was stood in the pool trying to have sex doggy fashion with a girl lent over the edge facing out. Because his belly was so big he couldn’t get his dick anywhere near where it should be, so without any shame or embarrassment he simply put both hands under his mammoth gut, lifted it up and dropped it on the woman’s back. Her legs shuddered but she held firm. The big guy then inched forward and proceeded to back scuttle her to the best of his abilities. I have to say there were a lot of very big Americans, I know I can’t say too much as in my later years I have put on the pounds, but I mean big big.

  The Yanks always seem to take things to extremes and Hedonism was ninety nine percent American. In fact, the whole time we were there we only met two couples that were not from the USA. One was Swedish and the other German. We four couples were the only English there and our accents made us the centre of attention, in a ‘good way.’ As soon as we got to the shallow pool and started talking the Yanks were round us like flies. We had great novelty value for them. I think they thought that being English we would be all shy and prudish, but we were all experienced swingers, this was no place for first timers.

  We found out from our new American friends that the real action began around midnight, either in the pool areas or at the piano bar; a large lounge where a resident pianist played a compilation of tunes and anything went. That night, all scrubbed up and dressed smart casual, we entered the piano bar to a reception of ‘Th
e British Are Coming’ from some of the Yanks we had met at the pool earlier. The man at the piano did his best rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’ and Dave, with his dry sense of humour, thanked everyone for making us so welcome then asked how the colonists were getting on without us. The Yanks loved that and in no time at all we were surrounded by American swingers. I like Americans; they’re loud, over the top and know how to have a good time, they hoop and holler a lot too and tend towards brashness, but for all that they make good companions and nothing seems too much trouble for them. Sexually, they have no hang ups, at least the ones we met didn’t.

  As the night wore on, we drank a little too much Jamaican rum. Hedo is all inclusive and the rum and cokes were trebles, as were the pina coladas and vodkas. It reminded me of a typical Scottish house party. Anyway, by the end of the night we were all a little drunk and the exhaustion of the long journey began to take its toll. So, to the disappointment of our American friends, we all went back to our rooms to sleep.

  The following morning we all made it to the induction meeting, where one of the Hedo staff tell you what’s happening and when. There was to be a wet t-shirt competition that afternoon, a pyjama party that evening, followed through the week by find your partner’s dick game for the ladies, naked trampolining, a toga party, naked beach volleyball, best boobs and ass contest and various other activities centred around getting down and dirty, as they put it.

  There were two beaches separated by a small rocky outcrop, the prude beach and the nude beach. The prude beach is where you could wear a swimming costume. It was almost empty every time we looked. We spent the day lazing around the pool or relaxing on the nude beach. The wet t-shirt competition was fun, Marie and Rachel got through to the final but were pipped to the post by a woman from Texas who had breasts like road cones, they must have cost her thousands. Later that night, Marie and I decided to take a moonlight walk along the shoreline as the Caribbean sea gently lapped onto the sand. We made love on the beach. Other couples were walking by holding hands, but no one took any notice of us, it was just the natural thing to do. Afterwards, we sat on a sun bed and scoured the clear night sky for shooting stars. “There goes one!” said Marie.