Britain’s oldest porn star has died at the age of 108, writes Nigel Eels.
Albert ‘How’s Yer Father’ Buckles is widely credited with dragging the moribund pre-WW1 adult entertainment industry into to a golden era of explicit silent movies in the 1920s.
With single-reel films such as ‘Well I Never!’ (1921), ‘Hairy Shenanigans’ (1924) and ‘Maud Does Frinton’ (1925), Buckles introduced inventive sex performed to a jaunty piano soundtrack and with caption cards reading “Uuugghh!” and “Yessss!”
Prior to that live action porn had been restricted to live music hall acts consisting of women wearing shower caps and men in boaters twiddling their moustaches suggestively.
His films – in which he was an enthusiastic participant – were among the first to introduce now standard porn plot devices such as “a plumber calls”, “in the doctor’s surgery” and “picking up a teenage hitchhiker”.
Buckles himself described his new style as being “like a saucy seaside postcard, but with moving pictures and a pop shot that’ll have audiences diving for cover under their seats”.
Sheena Flitch, lecturer in pornographic studies at the University of Leeds, said: “Buckles was an innovator and a visionary in the field of adult entertainment, and is responsible for much of the filth we now take for granted and our children download from the internet.”
Ironically Buckles began performing as part of a family barber’s shop quartet in the music halls of northern England. But his career, and his life, changed for ever when his genitals were shot off by a German sniper at the Battle of Ypres.
“Plastic surgery was non-existent, so instead the doctors replaced his manhood with the only thing to hand – which happened to be an 18in mortar shell. From that moment on his fame was assured.”
But despite his success, Buckles fell foul of the same curse that ended the career of most silent era movie stars: tacky 16mm colour film and badly dubbed sound.
Suddenly out of date, he quit the business to grow vineyards in the Dordogne. His last adult movie appearance was in the 1974 German production ‘Der Alt F******’ in which he played a cameo role as a retired plumber.
He had remained out of the public eye since the early 1980s, when the unexploded mortar shell detonated, leaving him terribly injured.
A family friend, who did not wish to be identified, said: “The day his scrotum went up was the day Albert died, if you ask me.”
* Full obituary next week.
