The struggles of a family-owned sex store business in Brighton were uncovered in a documentary that couldn’t decide if it was a tense drama or a cheery romp
Taz Richardson is studying music production. “But it’s a tough business to break into. So it’s rubber cocks for me at the moment.” As heir to his father Tim’s two sex shops in Brighton, Taz is – reluctantly – being groomed to take over. He has the 1,000-yard stare of a man who has seen too much, and, after staff meetings at which his mother reports on the new sex-toy stock she has been road-testing, heard too much, too. “I don’t understand,” he says at one point, when a pulsating “milking machine” is unboxed. “What does it milk?” “Spunk!” roars Nancy. “It’s every young man’s worst nightmare,” he later says to camera. He doesn’t move, but you can feel his soul shudder.
The tension between a father’s dreams and a son’s wish never to hear his parents discuss sexual aids is one of two conflicts at the heart of this documentary, A Very British Sex Shop (Channel 4). The other is the relationship between Nancy, Taz’s mother and the ex-wife of Tim, and Calandra, a former retail assistant and a terrific piece of trouble straight from central casting, who says she was determined to have Tim as soon as she saw him. Or, as Nancy puts it: “He decided to run off with the Saturday girl. I think he would have liked it to be an affair I never knew about. But I found out.” Whenever the subject comes up, Tim has a stare of his own. About 500 yards at the moment, but I bet you three pig-gimp masks it will elongate over the years.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2KdZ8X8
via
0 Comments