NIPPLES and pubic hair. Once it was a crime in Britain to show them in live performance or print. Then along came a spiv from the Midlands with 5/- in his pocket who saw opportunities, exploited them and when he died in 2008 was Britain’s wealthiest individual. But at personal cost.

Writer Matt Greenhalgh has deftly assembled a screenplay from archival material for director Michael Winterbottom to tell the story of Paul Raymond who once said: “There will always be sex” which he set about selling in lavish sex-focused theatrical productions and magazines forming fundamental elements of Winterbottom’s film.

But its real meat is actor Steve Coogan playing Raymond defying Grundyism and influential in the sexual revolution of the 1960s while enjoying a lifestyle that, in his last years, turned to ashes in his mouth. He bequeathed some 24 hextares of prime Soho real estate to the two daughters born to his beloved daughter, whose death at 36 from drugs and alcohol devastated him.

A towering figure in cinema, Winterbottom pulls no punches in staging Raymond’s theatrical career and offers no moral judgements about sexuality which Raymond recognised as merely an element of the human condition. He may have sold erotica but he was not a pimp. The film presents him as somebody for whom we feel little compassion after his private life went sour. But there can be no denying that the hedonism of his journey must have been fun. On that ground alone, the film merits a look.

 At Palace Electric