Prisoners of Porn

OK, so after a couple of test posts, this is where we finally start for real...

Every so often I get asked that hoary old question of where I get my story ideas from. Well, the great curse of having a mind warped by years of exposure to sleaze is that you can bring an off-centre perspective to just about anything you see on TV, hear on the radio or read in the newspapers.

Last week, for instance, I heard a newsreader saying that an Iraqi hostage had been seen apparently alive and well in a recently released video. Now, the immediate thought which sprang into my head was that the video in question was a porn video. I had this sudden vision of some poor relative of thee hostage in question sticking on a video they'd got 'under the counter' (in brown paper wrappings, of course), from their local 'Blockbuster', hoping for a couple of hours relief from worrying about the fate of their loved one, only to be confronted with the sight of them stark bollocking naked, ejaculating all over the ample breasts of some blonde nympho schoolgirl. Or taking it up the Gary Glitter from some bull-dyke with a strap-on.

Imagine the shock of some poor git who has been worried sick about an abducted friend or relative for months, confronted with that sort of thing! All that time they'd spent losing their hair with stress, suffering heart attacks and nervous breakdowns, and the cause of it has been indulging in unbridled shag-fests (for money) for the entire duration!

In story terms, several possibilities immediately sprang to mind. Are alleged hostages faking their own abductions in order to pursue new careers in adult entertainment? Alternatively, is this all part of a new money-making strategy on the part of Iraqi insurgents - kidnapping Westerners to forcibly star in porn films which can be sold for profit to finance their cause? This latter idea would tie-in with the news story from a few weeks ago about the stolen British diplomatic satellite phones in Baghdad being used to call sex lines - the underlying thrust of any story being the irony of anti-Western insurgents adopting the capitalist model to harness our lust for pornography as a means of financing their guerilla war against the US. Of course, another take could be people hearing about the hostage porno flicks and actually going to Baghdad to try and get abducted and forced to have sex on camera!

So there you are - one headline provides the basis for a whole story (which I'm now going to go off and attempt to write). All it took was a smutty turn of mind!