'Ave You Got a Male Assistant Please Miss?

Overview

A production of Oxford Polytechnic for sponsor the Family Planning Association, this is an unreservedly hairy promotion of the prophylactic in avoiding unwanted pregnancies. A wave of period details situate the film in both time and milieu. The culture of its audience, 1970s students, is evoked and displayed via a mattress on the floor, an ethnic rug, the kilim bedpsread, homebrew jars, denim clothes and by hair: long hair, facial hair - beards. The main actors are dead ringers for the infamous cover stars of Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex, published the year before.

Graham Jones