Today, would have been the 80th birthday of the long-forgotten actress named Mary Millington. Blonde, petite and delicately beautiful, she was the undisputed queen of an equally forgotten genre of cinema – the 1970s British sex comedy. There’s even a blue plaque in Soho celebrating Mary and her most successful film, Come Play With Me .

Seamy cinemas in Soho were the natural home for Millington’s films but they were also shown in ABCs and Odeons all over the country. When I was at school, I worked at my local Odeon, which had three screens. Upstairs in screen one, you could see the big new release. Downstairs in screen two, last week’s big new release. And in hidden away in screen three, British sex comedies.

Cheaply made and fairly harmless, they weren’t hardcore porn – just saucy, o

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