Armed with a camcorder, pseudonyms straight out of a
joke shop and questionable medical qualifications, Dr Neil Down and Phil Mycock
were two muscular specimens who made a grab for fame in the British porn
industry at the tail end of the 1990s.
Both men were ex-strippers –and by Christ didn’t you know it- their Neil
Down Sex Therapist series is a textbook example of how queer, straight porn can
be, when it’s in the hands of male narcissists.
Too used to being the centre of attention, the pair come across as the
type of men who’d beat their meat to photos of themselves. In their videos, Neil and Phil approach the
task of fucking a woman as if she was a new piece of gym equipment...it all
adds up to a display of muscle and physical strength, strictly done to win the
adulation of fellow meatheads.
Alternating the camerawork between each other, Neil and Phil use the
series as an excuse to immortalise their pumped up bodies on video, with the female
performers...the people who the punters were paying to see...often lost amidst
a jumble of thrusting muscles and buttocks.
Even now, decades after the Neil Down series came to an end, their names
are still mud in certain circles. “I
couldn’t stand those two preening self-obsessed idiots” remembered one porn
collector recently “they were far more into each other than any girl they
happened to be having sex with”. Like
elephants, duped porn punters have long memories, especially when it comes to
those who have done them wrong. The name
of Neil and Phil’s production company ‘Priapic’ and its logo of a naked,
muscular man staring at his own dick, says it all.
Aping the format of such rivals as Ben Dover and Omar
Williams, the Neil Down videos embraced the ‘gonzo’ approach of American
pornography, while refusing to give up on the ghost of the 1970s British Sex
Comedy era. Our two heroes, Dr Neil Down
and his assistant Phil Mycock are two amateur sex therapists whose job drags
them into a series of escapades involving bored, repressed women who call on
Neil and Phil to be their sexual savours.
No L.A. mansions, limousines or hot tubs for these two, keeping it real
and British is what Neil and Phil were all about. A succession of student bedsits, messy
kitchens and the upstairs of pubs is where Neil and Phil did their loving, with
the shot on video production values adding to the home-grown grot. In all likelihood Neil and Phil grew up
watching the Confessions and Adventures films on VHS, and recognising positive
male role models when they saw them, decided that’s what they’d like to do when
they grew up. The Neil Down videos
giving an idea what those 1970s sex comedy series could have deteriorated into,
had they taken the step down to shooting on video, and had gone hardcore.
As a result of the censorship that was still around in
the 1990s, the Neil Down series had a complex release history in the UK. The series began as half an hour episodes
which were shown on adult channels on Satellite TV. They were then compiled into three episode 18
cert video releases. While satellite TV
only played the soft versions of the series, which usually had to suffer
further cuts for their BBFC approved video releases, America and the rest of
Europe got the uncut, hardcore versions of the Neil Down series. When hardcore was finally legalised in the
UK, the hard versions finally saw a UK release, albeit slapped with the
prohibitive R18 rating.
The initial 18 cert video releases afforded Neil and
Phil their desired 15 minutes of fame, which was mainly played out on late
night British TV. Neil showed up as a
guest, for a cosy promotional chat on Channel 5’s ‘European Blue Review’. On the other hand the series was turned into
the laughing stock of late night TV on ‘Vids’, Channel 4’s anarchic video
review series, which mercilessly took the piss.
Vids’ review of one of the Neil Down videos ended with host Nigel
Buckland exploding into a fury, thrusting his crotch at the camera and
demanding to know “what do I have to do to get an erection in this town?”
A Neil Down video being roasted on 'Vids'
Both Vids and European Blue Review did at least have
the good taste to feature Hannah Coleman in the clips they showed from the Neil
Down series. Hannah is the only reason
you should give a damn about the Neil Down series, with her devilishly wicked
smile, large breasts and boundless enthusiasm, Hannah was that rare kind of
performer with the Midas touch of turning even the most artless, shot on video
trash into porn gold. Her involvement in these videos proving that even fools
like Neil and Phil do sometimes strike gold.
As one Hannah fan recently put it “she had a magnetism that is so
attractive, and I think rarely seen in a porn star, the best are counted on one
hand”. Be warned though, any Neil Down
video that doesn’t involve Hannah should be considered the porn equivalent of
asbestos, something from the past that you’d be well advised not to touch.
Hannah’s first entry into the Neil Down world- from
1999- is ‘Mary’s Story’ aka ‘Help, I’m a Virgin’. As with all of Neil and Phil’s adventures,
Mary’s story kicks off with a message being left on Dr Neil’s answering
machine. This time from Hannah’s
character, Mary, an 18 year old university student who is desperate to lose her
cherry. “All of my friends have had sex
and are experienced” pleads Mary “I never meet boys and I feel as if my body’s
going to explode if I don’t have sex soon”.
Neil and Phil are practically falling over themselves to answer the
call. Although Phil, who is acting as
cameraman manages to test Neil’s patience by lingering too long on an
establishing shot of the University, causing Neil to remind his gormless assistant
that they are here to film “arse not buildings”.
The duo eventually find their way to Mary’s messy
university digs, much to their delight she’s only wearing an oversized red and
white rugby style shirt, and is already showing a great deal of leg. Taking over the camerawork, the good Dr Neil immediately
does battle with his Mr Hyde side.
Asking a series of mundane questions about university life, while
revealing where his head is really at by crash zooming on her shapely
legs. “I find you really attractive” he
tells her, before reassuringly adding “but that is purely professional”, as
Mary cringes with embarrassment at the two men’s obvious sexual interest in
her. Neil explains away the presence of
a camera by claiming that they are making a documentary that might help women
in a similar predicament to her “not that many girls like to admit that they
are still a virgin”. Neil asks Mary to
sit next to Phil, and even though she’s still wearing the red and white striped
shirt you get the first idea of the stunning body which that shirt is
concealing. Something that doesn’t go unnoticed
by Dr Neil “you’re well endowed really” he tells her, before working up the
courage to ask her “it is warm in here, why don’t you take your top off”. Sure enough the top comes off, leaving Mary’s
breasts jiggling about in a bra that is barely able to contain them. In a pure British sex comedy moment, Neil
blurts out “you don’t get many of those to the pound”. Unlike the majority of 1990s hardcore, Mary’s
Story isn’t in any rush to jump straight to the action, with much of its
sexiness coming from Neil’s gradual, verbal seduction of Mary, and constantly
daring her to go further and further.
Mary’s Story plays an erotic guessing game with its audience...will Neil
talk her into taking all her clothes off, maybe she’ll allow some foreplay or
even for both men to have full sex with her.
Or will the duo’s love of double entendres cause them to blow the deal,
resulting in her seeing through their sex therapist facade and turf their horny
asses out of her student digs?
Phil takes over the camerawork as Neil takes centre
stage in order to remove Mary’s bra, then moves on to caressing and kissing her
breasts...much to Phil’s annoyance and Mary’s enjoyment. Mary loosens up but seeks reassurance that
their little documentary isn’t “going to be on TV”, a moment that the makers of
Channel 4’s Vids couldn’t resist actually putting on TV.
Neil takes his ‘doctor’ persona serious enough to lose
his composure whenever his co-stars break character or mock the scenarios they
are meant to be playing out. Phil,
however, is obviously here to fuck girls and regards all this pesky dialogue
and play acting as an unnecessary obstacle in the way of all his fun. As Hannah strips off and plays with herself
on the bed, Phil vents his confusion and frustration as to why they are not
just getting along with the job of fucking her, complaining that he is
“straining at the leash”. One of several
pieces of dialogue in the video that sees Phil compared to a dog. Neil however is a stickler for staying in
character and insists on further doctor themed chit-chat. As much as these videos portray Neil and Phil
as an inseparable duo, who do love zooming in on each other’s muscles, you
sense underlining friction between the two men, fuelling rumours that Neil and
Phil didn’t get along off-screen. Tellingly
in later Neil Down videos, Neil often flies solo with Phil nowhere to be seen,
indicating that all was not well in Neil and Phil land. Although he comes across as the archetypal
1990s bloke, Phil Mycock wasn’t above taking gay-for-pay gigs, and around the
same time as the Neil Down videos was showing up as a solo centrefold in gay
mags. Phil and Neil give the impression
that being admired and idolised was a huge motivation, and they weren’t fussy
about what audience was watching them...as long as they kept on staring.
Phil is appeased when Neil allows him to join Mary on
the bed and suck on one of her tits, albeit followed up by about twenty
questions from inquisitor Neil... “do you feel excited”, “is that nice” yadda,
yadda, yadda.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this for the camera”
remarks Mary, apologising to Neil and Phil when nerves threaten to get the
better of her. She awkwardly removes her
panties, finally giving Phil and Neil an eyeful of the crotch that Phil quickly
buries his face in.
Watching Hannah Coleman go to work is quite the
experience, her loud, intense orgasming suggesting that Phil may have found his
true calling in life...in-between her legs. Her sexual ecstasy at this point is
always believable, never straying into phoney, porn histrionics. The sight of Hannah thrashing about the bed,
her breasts bouncing around in all directions, causes even Neil to temporally
ditch his ‘purely professional’ shtick, in favour of fondling those massive
tits.
For all his initial ‘straining at the leash’
enthusiasm, Phil is oddly detached once the actual sex kicks in, happy to lie
back and think of England as Hannah greedily eyes up the bulge in his Calvin
Klein underpants. All of which leaves
the heavy lifting in the video to Hannah, as her character Mary finally loses
her cherry by mounting Phil’s hard-on, riding him with all the ferocity of
someone charging into Valhalla itself.
Be in no doubt, all of the erotic value in this video is down to Hannah
Coleman’s performance, initially believable as the sweet, but sexually inept,
girl next door type, before blowing that screen image apart and embracing the
role of the dirtiest girl you could ever hope to meet. Her performance here breathes new life into
the tired virgin/whore fantasy. Like em
to talk filth? Then Hannah is your gal.
Her dialogue in the latter half of the video is a slew of obscenities
worthy of The Exorcist. “Fuck me, you
son of a bitch” she yells at Phil, leaving a red faced Neil to wisecrack “did
you learn that in English classes”.
The official line on the actor who was behind the Neil
Down character is that he is a happily married, heterosexual but watching one
of these videos you can understand why punters back then had their suspicions
about him being a possible undercover homosexual. His banter to Hannah/Mary in this video often
feels like he is living out the experience of being fucked by Phil through her.
Offering her advice and tips as she sucks Phil’s cock, then egging her on
during sex “you love that big dicked, cock of his”. At one point Neil even tells her “you could
stick your fingers up Phil’s arse if you want”.
Neil the cameraman might have an obsession for zooming in on Hannah’s
crotch that is worthy of Jess Franco, but when it comes to Neil the performer,
he is happy to deputise the satisfying of that area of her body to Phil. In what becomes a repeat pattern in the Neil
Down videos, the actual sex Neil allocates for himself here is strictly of the
anal and oral variety, finished off with lots of jerking off from Neil in order
to deliver the all important money shot.
Neil often closes his eyes during such J.O sessions, as if mentally
blocking out his female co-stars.
Reading between the lines though, you suspect Neil’s real bag is
control, and being able to erotically pull the strings of others. Neil is in his element seeing his sexual
orders being obeyed, telling Hannah “pull your skirt up”, “slowly caress your
breasts” and Phil to “take her hand and show her that big chest you’ve got
there”. Neil even invites the puppet
master analogy himself, at one point referring to Hannah as being “like a
puppet...on cue”. Maybe Neil should have
remade Antony Balch’s Horror Hospital, with himself in the Dr Storm role.
Hannah attacks the exhaustive demands placed on her in
this video with an incredible, animalistic passion. From being fucked hard in the ass by Neil,
while blowing Phil... to sucking off Neil while riding Phil...at one point
threatening to completely derail filming by pulling Neil and his camera on top
of her and Phil. The video might well be
Hannah’s equivalent of ‘Miss Bohrloch’, its a spellbinding sexual showcase for
her, in which she outshines and exhausts her male co-stars, despite being
outnumbered by them 2 to 1.
Finally a weary Phil can take no more, flips her on
her back and insists this will be “the last position”. The video then breaks with its gonzo/POV
format, to show a long shot of the two musclemen working her over, Mary/Hannah
buried somewhere underneath them, visible only by her legs which are high in
the air. Cut to Neil’s POV, as he
alternates between filming himself being blown by her and Phil fucking her in
the pussy. Despite Hannah’s cocksucking
ability and Neil’s own frenzied jerking off, its Phil who is first past the
post, shooting his load over Hannah’s crotch.
A brief shot of which surprisingly made it into the otherwise
bowdlerised 18 cert video release.
Having miraculously survived the task of fucking Hannah, Phil appears to
be in some post-coital trance and can only keep muttering the name of her
character “Mary...Mary...Mary”. Neil
snaps him out of it by insisting “my turn now, son” and insists on Phil taking
over the camerawork. True to form, Phil
chooses to ignore the woman underneath them, who has just gotten him off, in
favour of a close-up on Neil’s sweaty, muscular torso. Neil beats his meat over Hannah, requiring
every amount of available strength to deliver the goods and go all Jackson
Pollock over her face. The soft 18 cert
version of the video substitutes this with an unintentionally hilarious few
moments of Neil’s upper torso convulsing wildly, sweat flying everywhere like a
dog shaking itself after a dip in the water.
As is customary for a Neil Down video, the scene ends with a self-congratulatory
shot of Neil beaming into the camera, happy to have narrowly scrapped through
another sexual encounter and basking in his own ego. ‘What do I have to do to get an erection in
this town’? Dr Neil Down’s answer must
surely have been to stare at himself in the mirror.
Hannah Coleman spent 18 months in the porn business, a
brief career that took her as far afield as Venice Beach. It was there that Hannah received an idea of what big time fame was like
when her looks and British accent caused her to be mobbed by a crowd who had
mistaken her for Geri Halliwell. Back on
home turf, Hannah was in such high demand that her career practically acts as a
microcosm of the era’s UK porn, and a Who’s Who of its male performers. Ben Dover put her in ‘Ben Dover’s Naughty
British Babes’ which captures Hannah at her wildest, and outrageously opens
with her blowing Ben in his car, as other road users obliviously pass-by. Ben then drives her to a hotel room where
other naked, horny guys await her arrival.
The most memorable moment in Naughty British Babes sees Hannah ecstatically
run into a room, jump on the bed and throw her legs apart, with Ben and the
other guys in hot pursuit...as The Sensational Alex Harvey Band once sang ‘ain’t
nothing like a gang bang to blow away the blues’. Fancy seeing Hannah go to bed with hot chocolate
rather than Horlicks? Then there’s ‘Big Boob Booty’ in which Hannah takes on
the super endowed black stud Omar Williams.
A video which ends with a Confessions-esque scene of Hannah’s husband
coming home early, forcing Omar to make a bare assed retreat. Such was the popularity of ‘Mary’s Story’
that Hannah was recalled to the Neil Down series for ‘Katy’s Story’, in which
Hannah stands in for the absent Phil Mycock and helps fulfil the girl on girl
fantasy of housewife Katy. Dr Neil
largely stays behind the camera in this one, taunting his absent male co-star
“poor old Phil” and predictably restricting his interactions with the girls to
those of the anal and oral varieties.
Katy’s Story once again sees Dr Neil suffer under the quick wit and acid
tongue of Hannah Coleman. When Neil asks
Hannah if Katy is good at eating pussy, Hannah fires back “she’s better than
you, Doctor”.
Ben Dover's version of Hannah
Want to see Hannah in chains? Then there’s ‘Sex Sluts
in the Tower of London’ which mixes hardcore with light S&M in scenes allegedly
taking place in the Tower. A location
unconvincingly evoked by cutaways to tourist home video type footage of the
Tower and other London landmarks. Sex
Sluts sees Hannah getting fucked by the pot bellied, indecorous Dick Nasty, a
scene supposedly set in one of the turrets. At her insistence, Nasty spits in
her face during sex.
The straw that broke the Coleman’s back though was a
run in with severe Euro double-act Rocco Siffredi and Kelly Stafford. “As soon as I walked in Kelly was taking a
beating which instantly put me off” Hannah remembered in 2002 “he was only
paying me £200, I felt like running away”.
During filming, Hannah alleged that Stafford lost her cool and slapped Hannah
across the face “this deeply upset me as I like Kelly, but in the room with
Rocco she turned into an animal...Rocco told me I was wooden and said not many
great things about me”. After this
incident, Hannah left the business in 1999, made a brief comeback in 2001,
before disappearing into suburban anonymity.
“I always had a great sense of humour on set, always had a laugh a
min. It was my laughing and joking that
kept everything soooo real” she reflected in 2007 “to do this kind of job you
have to be open minded and have a great sense of humour- I never took myself
too seriously...I have no regrets, it was fun while it lasted”.
Phil Mycock -whose real name is Wayne Casey- has now left the business. Dr Neil Down has hung up his stethoscope and moved behind the camera. He now directs fetish videos as ‘Kendo’, a clipped version of his real name Ken Docherty. Maybe one day when the olive branch of nostalgia is extended to the 1990s, Hannah Coleman will be recognised as one the decade’s great British porn stars. Until then she’ll remain a wonderful, salacious memory for those lucky enough to know about her, marred only by sorrow for those who’ve never heard her name.
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