By the time the 80s arrived, we were dying to have sex. However the fact that condoms were illegal to all but married couples (on prescription and from certain chemists) meant that it wasn’t going to be easy.
We had to come up with other means to allow us to satisfy our carnal desires and as necessity is the mother of invention we resorted to extreme measures – we had the offending items sent to us by relatives in England or we involved ourselves in some heavy duty cross border condom smuggling.
However, we didn’t always get away with it. Dr Andrew Rynne didn’t and neither did the Virgin Megastore, finding itself at the centre of an undercover condom bust, which saw Christine Donaghy from the Irish Family Planning Association facing jail.
In the early 1980s, we didn’t have MTV, we had something much better – MTUSA – and we had Fab Vinnie a.k.a. Vincent Hanley who he was determined to make a generation of Irish teenagers sexy and cool. Vinnie brought New York into our living homes. Boy George was wearing make up, Frankie was telling us to Relax and Madonna sang about being a virgin…again.
When it came to religion, the Church was in for a big shock as were the rest of us. Bishop Casey may have toed the Vatican line on birth control, but when it came to the matter of celibacy, Ireland was in for a shock.
With the church in the midst of scandals, where could we turn for guidance? Well we found solace in The Lover’s Guide which hit the number one slot in the Irish video charts and stayed there till we’d learnt at least six new positions…
Soon the doors of Ireland’s first erotic emporium were open for business. And by the last decade of the 20th century – packing an arsenal of day-glo condoms, sex instruction manuals and big rubber yokes imported from Britain – Ireland finally joined the carnal mainstream.