CURIOSITY, titillation and contemplation are provided in abundance by Channel 4 over the next eight weeks as The Red Light Zone explodes all over your screen with ‘an exciting new area of late-night programming focusing on sex, the sex industries, and sexual tourism’.

Broadcasting after 11pm and running for over three hours each Saturday from March 11, the RLZ will feature a selection of short dramas, comedy and documentaries on topics such as prostitution, the growth in erotic entertainment, and pornography, which have been commissioned by Channel 4’s Stuart Cosgrove from a range of independents, young women directors, and also featuring the better-known work of producers like Andy Warhol and Derek Jarman. Indeed, the first slot on opening night, the work of director Margo Harkin, is from Northern Ireland’s Besom Productions. NYPD Nude is a documentary on Carol Shaya, the New York policewoman who stripped for Playboy – the use of her work uniform in the shoot caused her to be disciplined and docked thirty days’ pay.

March 11 also sees The Peanut Club, a documentary about an LA strip club for women who watch women, and Blue, the diary of a Canadian carpet factory boss who is, literally, an obsessive wanker! Features on the 18th March include Scarborough Ahoy! which tells the tale of a bar-maid who likes sleeping around and her gay friend, Michael. Both like men, both like sailors, both go rampant in Scarborough!

The third week of the The Red Light Zone includes screenings of Go Go Archipelago and Istanbul’s Third Sex, serious documentaries on the problems of prostitution and transvestism, in addition to the lighter tale of Drag King, on lesbian women in Manhattan who dress as men with ‘a mock dildo down their pants’, and How To Read A Dirty Movie. Also featured is Daddy And The Muscle Academy, described as ‘a classic of gay cinema’, and Rosebud, a drama of lesbian awakening.

April plays host to a range of intriguing titles including Readers’ Wives, Fetish, Caught Looking, Sacred Sex and Viva Tabatha! which tells of the porn movie star who made 150 hardcore movies in two-and-a-half years and retired at 21.

Of particular interest to people in this country is a ‘Without Walls’ special on April 22, entitled El Porno, a documentary on Mexico’s transition from strict Roman Catholicism to ‘the most sexually liberated country in Latin America’, and the heavy religious orientation of porn movies uncovered.

I knew I was missing something by not going to Mass . . .