In troubling times like these, often the small details get lost. Britain may face impending economic doom, an identity crisis of enormous proportions and all its friends turning their backs. Yes, we may be at peak bleak. But there’s a greater danger facing Fractured Britain 2k16 (TM). Post-Brexit, with everything we thought we knew about our society – inclusive, sensible, not on a hysterical spiral into self-destruction, etc – gone, there’s one oiled-up, shining facet left, and there’s a risk it’ll end up defining us all: kink.
Pampas grass, public-school floggings, gimp MPs: none of these have helped allay this reputation for sordidness. And, frankly, things aren’t helped by Channel 4 and their mucky infatuation with sex docs. Joceline, star of the latest of these, Kinky Britain (Monday, 10pm, Channel 4), does at least suggest that this world of sexual deviancy might be compatible with our green and pleasant land. Joceline is a quintessential English rose from the pages of Homes & Gardens – oh, and also a bondage model. After a long period of secret shame and very British repression, she finally embraced her liking for getting tied up a few years ago, met her thigh-rubbing husband Howell, and hasn’t looked back. Joceline and Howell’s story is a modern, Latex-coated fairytale. The two were so well matched – “romantically, sexually, fetishly”, as Howell puts it – that they started Restrained Elegance, a fetish production company that specialises in bondage films and tender bedroom BDSM photography. It’s an enterprise that proved so successful that Howell gave up his career as a university professor, and the pair have been happily trussed together ever since.
But kink in 2016 isn’t the reserve of only this type of tally-ho fetishist. Ordinary people such as Michelle, a bespoke fetish-cam girl, and ex-swimwear model Camurun are not just having a go but turning the nation’s kink obsession into entrepreneurial gold. Michelle has built her Go Pro-enabled empire by being a sort of kink of all trades, with a repertoire as wide as balloon popping and gummy bear chewing. Camurun specialises in one thing: female wrestling. When she saw a gap in the alternatively aroused video market, she shrewdly rolled up the sleeves of her Topshop trousersuit and filled that gap with pectoral goddesses who you can pay to pummel you. Camurun doesn’t wrestle; she’s more of a Vince McMahon figure, albeit sleeker and with a better tan. What she’s doing works for her but I can’t help but think she’s missed a trick by not calling herself Cynthia Pain.
Beyond business, the world of Torture Garden and flagellation racks are not for Camurun. If she has any perversions, she doesn’t tell us and in this sense she’s a breath of fresh air. We could all live without knowing, for instance, that the thread running through Joceline and Howell’s marriage is actually 30 metres of chafe-resistant rope. It’s truly heartwarming that they’ve found each other, like blindfolded subs in the lonely orgy of life. As they unpack their Renault at a wooded walking trail, Thermos and picnic blankets in tow, to spend an afternoon doing a BDSM photoshoot, I wish them a long and pleasant life together. But even I’ve got my limits. I feel it’s worth evoking Mrs Patrick Campbell and her quote about doing what you like as long as it doesn’t frighten the horses. This is only possible in Joceline, Howell and even Camurun’s cases, indoors with the lights out and the curtains drawn, beyond the gaze of Channel 4 cameras ■
