Cultpix Radio Ep.81 - Interview with The Lovers' Guide producer Robert Page

Django Nudo and The Smut Peddler welcome Robert Page, the visionary creator behind the revolutionary sex education series "The Lover's Guide". Page delights listeners with extraordinary behind-the-scenes stories from his illustrious career, including a surreal phone call from Stanley Kubrick seeking advice on directing intimate scenes for "Eyes Wide Shut" and an unexpected encounter with tabloid journalism involving Heather Mills McCartney. Perhaps most surprisingly, Page reveals how his educational series may have influenced the Catholic Church to soften its stance on masturbation after the programme demonstrated how widespread the practice is among both men and women.

The conversation thoroughly explores the remarkable origin story of "The Lover's Guide" in the early 1990s, strategically positioned in a unique cultural window between older clinical sex education films and the explosion of internet pornography. Page recounts his pivotal meeting with British film censor Jim Ferman during the AIDS crisis, where he unexpectedly received permission to show explicit sexual content for educational purposes, including erections, intercourse, and oral sex—provided they "didn't linger" on any particular activity and included a doctor as presenter. This breakthrough allowed Page to create what would become a cultural phenomenon that invested the equivalent of £5 million (in today's money) in production values.

Page shares fascinating insights into the series' development philosophy, explaining their deliberate approach to portraying intimacy with genuine warmth and respect rather than clinical detachment or pornographic sensationalism. He discusses the considerable challenges of finding performers willing to appear in such groundbreaking content, the scandals that erupted when some were discovered to have pornographic backgrounds. The series ultimately proved so popular that it knocked Hollywood blockbusters like "Die Hard" and "The Little Mermaid" off the video charts and was purchased predominantly by women (55%).

The conversation takes several poignant turns as Page reveals personal struggles during production, including his marriage falling apart while creating a series about enhancing relationships. He also shares the tragic story of the series' star couple, Wendy Anne Paige and her husband Tony, who became celebrities through the programme before experiencing a downward spiral that ended with Wendy's death "in penury" in December 2024.

There's revealing anecdotes about international reception, including unauthorised Chinese translations that sold millions without compensation, censorship battles in Japan, and Dutch companies that purchased distribution rights only to bury the product while creating their own competing versions. Page expresses particular pride in the series' unexpected success in France, noting the irony of "the English teaching the French about sex."

The conversation concludes with Page discussing the enduring legacy of "The Lover's Guide" thirty years after its initial release, with both The Guardian and The Sun recently publishing features acknowledging its continuing relevance. Page shares touching stories about receiving thousands of letters from couples whose relationships were saved by the series and expresses hope that its core messages about communication, respect, and genuine intimacy can still positively impact relationships today—values he believes are needed more than ever in our increasingly divided world.

Throughout the interview, Page's passion for his groundbreaking work shines through, along with his sense of humour and genuine belief in the power of education to foster healthier, more loving relationships. This episode offers listeners not just a nostalgic look back at a cultural phenomenon, but a thoughtful reflection on how approaches to sex education have evolved over decades and what might be lost or gained in our modern digital landscape.

Transcript

Cultpix Radio WCPX 66.6 Interview Transcript

Featuring Robert Page, Creator of "The Lover's Guide"

Django Nudo: Welcome to Cult Píx Radio WCPX 66.6 in a forbidden space. You're here with me, your host, Django Nudo.

The Smut Peddler: And the Smut Peddler.

Django Nudo: Welcome very much to Cult Picks Radio, although we're recording with video now, so this is a first for us and we're super thrilled that you are our first ever guest in this format. If we can get it to work, touch wood.

Robert Page: Looks like it's working and it's a great pleasure to meet you and be working with you guys. I'm thrilled and honoured.

Django Nudo: Yes. Well, we are super delighted and honoured because your documentaries were a centrepiece of the fourth anniversary of Cult Píx, which we just celebrated in April. And of course, I'm talking about the Lover's Guide, which we're going to get into much more detail about. It's had a tremendous response from our members, and it is such a groundbreaking series and such a great fit for Cult Píx that we're chuffed to bits really, aren't we Rickard?

The Smut Peddler: Absolutely. I am totally delighted and also we see, well, you've heard Robert about the top 10 list. You have 10 out of the spots in the 15 top list. That's not bad.

Robert Page: That is fantastic and considering we were doing it for 30 years, I'd have thought interest might have died out. When it started, it was pre-internet, pre this kind of streaming access that you all are wonderfully providing. Times have moved on. We couldn't have done what we did had the internet existed back then. All these stars aligned just over 30 years ago, and it was just incredible. The numbers we sold in those days, we don't quite make now. But we do get a lot of pirating, which is why being on a proper platform like yours is even more important to us because trying to get rid of the stuff on the pirate sites is like playing whack-a-mole.

This stuff takes a lot of making, it takes a lot of investment and care and time and people's involvement. It's a tremendous amount of work to have done over all these years, and to us, it's amazing that it's still having an impact. We're just delighted and thrilled. It always was meant to help people deepen their relationships and broaden their sexual horizons. None of us would be here if it weren't for sex. It's the most natural activity in the world, and we were trying to normalise it. We were trying to totally avoid any sense of sleaze or porn, and when you start using words like respect, it all sounds a bit worthy, and we don't mean that. We want it to be fun and enjoyable and really bringing people together and opening up to one another. And that's the real purpose behind all this.

The Smut Peddler: And I mean, you were pioneers, true pioneers. But the odd thing now is that 30 years on, we have to consider censoring even the most sensuous pictures from your covers when we put these up on Facebook. Otherwise, we will be banned. Because it can even be just suggestive. It doesn't even have to be outright nudity.

Robert Page: Well, we're slipping backwards and that to me is a great shame and a problem. And here in America, I'm talking to you from New York, they're banning books. Books like "The Naked Ape" by my friend Desmond Morris is banned because it says we're not fallen angels, we are risen apes. Well, you may or may not believe that, but the right to say it—people used to say, "I don't agree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it to the death." We're going the other way. We're going pro-censorship. That series "The Handmaid's Tale" is getting to be all too true in this kind of repression.

Genesis of The Lover's Guide

Django Nudo: Before we get too stuck into current politics, I want to backtrack because some of our members on Cult Píx weren't even born when the first Lover's Guide came out. I want to rewind to the genesis of the series because, as you said, it was groundbreaking in so many ways. What fascinates me is the fact that it happened in this space in between when sex education films—and there had been many before that, Swedish ones, German ones, American ones, many of them on Cult Píx—and as you said, the rise of the internet.

It was in this unique in-between period of packaged home media, VHS and DVD, as the primary platform. These were not shown in cinemas, they were not streamed anywhere. But they were available to buy for the wide public, not in sleazy shops. Taking us back to the beginning, this really came about because of two things I gather: Richard Branson's, the Virgin Media founder's desire to sell condoms, because it was back in the AIDS days, and your background in industrial films and how-to films. How did those two meet?

Robert Page: It was how-to films. We did them with some of the major people of the time. In fact, some of them are still around like Prue Leith, who's still a big star of the British Bake Off. We did a cookbook with her. Now there are whole channels devoted to the kind of stuff we were doing how-tos about.

There was a big question that you couldn't possibly show an erect penis. That was like, we thought there was some kind of Florida rule or Cornwall rule or a one foot on the floor rule or some rule that banned you from showing penises. I was vaguely involved in having done these how-tos with Virgin. So I'd met Branson about five or six years before. We'd actually started with a film called "Becoming a Family," which was about getting pregnant.

We were very concerned to try and make something that would help in the AIDS crisis. Weirdly, we couldn't say much about homosexuality in those days. There was this section 28 that no one was allowed to promote homosexuality. This was all terrible.

Anyway, I went along to see the head of the British Film Censorship, Jim Ferman. He was an American who had lived in Britain for quite a while. He was very concerned about the AIDS crisis. So I was saying, "We want to show a man putting a condom on, but that means he has to have an erection." And Jim goes, "Well?" And I go, "Isn't there one of these rules that..." And he goes, "No, there's only one rule, and that is the rule of obscenity, the law of obscenity. That which will deprave or corrupt. I see nothing depraving or corrupting about a man putting a condom on, especially in the AIDS era. In fact, it seems downright sensible."

So, in a way, one of the stars that was aligning in all of this was the very thing of AIDS itself. He was concerned about people needing to put condoms on and know more about sex. So I said, "So can we show this?" And he said, "Yes." And I nearly fell off my chair. I mean, I just went, "What?" I kind of didn't really want to film men's penises at the time. It was kind of shocking to think—I'd never seen a film with penises in before at that time.

But then quick as a flash, this penny dropped in my head and I went, "You know all these how-tos I've done on gardening and babies and food and decorating houses? You wouldn't let me show one about sex, would you?" And he went, "Well, what would you want to show?" And I said, "Well, masturbation?" "Yes." "What? Sexual intercourse with actual penetration?" "Yes." "You wouldn't let me show oral, would you?" And he went, "Yes." And I went, "Oh my god." I knew we just hit gold dust. I knew that we just found the hidden treasure.

Django Nudo: You were knocking on an open door effectively, if he was ready to do that, as long as it wasn't quote-unquote obscene.

Robert Page: Yes. He actually later got sacked by the Home Secretary for releasing more explicit films than we were. This was sort of the first foot in the door kind of thing. But then he made these restrictions, these caveats, if you like:

One, that we couldn't linger. So whilst we could show everything, we couldn't show anything for any amount of time.

Two, that we had to put a doctor on the front of it. What? I mean, sex is hardly a medical miracle. It's one of the most natural activities. It has to go back to the beginning of humanity.

And three, that we got a renowned caring family organisation to check the script. So we found this one called the Family Planning Association. They thought it was such a hot potato that whilst they said they would read the script and tell us if there was anything too bad about it, they wouldn't put their name on it because this was like dynamite at the time.

So I rushed out of there and we went crazy. Most of the films we'd done up to then, though when I started in TV, we were using film even for the news. That's how old I am. Anyway, we'd all moved over to electronic. But I had this love of film, the richness and the warmth. So I wanted it shot on film. We spent all our money on it. We bet the bank, everything on this film. And that all seemed to be fantastic and going wonderfully.

We found all these courageous people who would actually demonstrate intimacy. We wanted real intimacy. We didn't want porn, we didn't want just people hammering away at one another or whatever. That was part of the whole point of the thing that it shouldn't at all look like that. We wanted people walking through fields and being in the bath and sitting in the garden with their kids and all of those things interspersed with their intimacy. And we wanted to get that across.

But when the press found out about it, first they were kind of pro us, which was weird. And they were like, "Oh, this is coming..." And then they decided there was much more if you could raise a whole press crazy attack on us.

Django Nudo: Sensationalise it. Yeah.

Robert Page: Feeding frenzy in the press. And sadly, let me just backtrack a little. When we were casting it, actually Dr. Stanway, who we found to present it—we actually wanted Alex Comfort, who I knew, who wrote "The Joy of Sex".

Django Nudo: Famous, yeah.

Robert Page: Yeah, but his publishers, Mitchell Beazley, wouldn't allow him to do it. They saw it as a sort of mix of brands. And they were selling so many copies of that book.

To digress a tiny bit on that, Alex Comfort had to say that he only edited "The Joy of Sex." If you look at it, it says "edited by Alex Comfort." He couldn't say he'd written it because that could lose him his medical license. The guy who illustrated it did it from some photos of, I think, Dutch people, a Dutch couple. So the hairy little guy who was so famous from it was hand drawn from these photographs. But the illustrators were actually insured by Mitchell Beazley against being prosecuted. It was that bad.

Going back even further, when I was at university in the late '70s, there was a guy called Dr. Martin Cole. For his clinic, he wanted to show masturbation and sexual intercourse. His two films were called that. One just showed a guy on a hospital gurney and a woman doing the same, and then the two of them in another scene making love. This was shown in the law facility of my university, Liverpool. They had to check there was no press there. The girl was found by the press, and she turned out to be a teacher in Manchester, and she was kicked out of her job.

Interestingly, at the time, I was writing this up, and I hadn't realised that this was going to actually affect my life later. He asked for questions and I said, "You know, I think you've done an amazing thing. I think you're showing us something we've never seen before. But it's so sterile. It's so lacking in any warmth." And he just said, "I think you've got a sexual problem." Anyway, it lodged in my head that one day I would make something that, if I ever was going to do it, I would make it warm and caring and intimate—not with this clinical approach.

Interestingly, some of the debates about what we were to do: Dr. Stanway was going to do the whole obstetric thing of having the women up in stirrups, pointing out where the clitoris is and where the urethra is and all of that. We were like, "Oh my god, no, we can't." Mind you, the scene where it does happen has been laughed at again and again because the voiceover goes, "Why not have half a glass of wine?"

Django Nudo: Not too much.

Robert Page: "And explore each other's geography." I mean...

Django Nudo: It's a very good geography exploration, I have to say, and very fetching brunette and her partner.

Robert Page: Yes, I think much better to do it in a kind of home environment than stirrups. I think that would be even too, not just clinical, but absurd.

The Smut Peddler: Exactly. But I must ask, as a Swede, how does this series relate to the Language of Love films from '69, '70 and '71? Because there are so many similarities about the gurney, but in the Swedish one, it was a rotating bed, but very clinical. And also the gynaecology chair, all of that was in those movies.

Django Nudo: And there you actually see the doctors sort of sitting around smoking as I...

The Smut Peddler: But these films also had censorship problems in the UK.

Robert Page: Yes. I hadn't actually seen them, though some of our crew had. They were another light shining towards doing this and making it the way it was. There've been several films out of Sweden that, you know, "I am curious yellow" and all of those that were beginning down a path that we could then push a lot further. So many things came together and made the sort of zeitgeist ready for what we were doing.

But I'm so grateful that we got in there before the internet, because after that, it was just pretty explicit. As you say, some of the other films were either this sort of obstetric thing or just porn. We wanted to be different.

Distribution and Public Response

Django Nudo: You wanted to be on the high street, and you were, but I gather there were bumps along the way.

Robert Page: That was the other thing that really changed everything. I said to Jim Ferman, "All our things have been on sale in what was then Woolworths and Smiths and all these high street stores. This is going to cost a lot of money and so the only way we can fund this is if it goes into high street stores." Whereas at the time, it wasn't even strictly legal to see hardcore material, even in sex shops. There were about 80 sex shops, I believe at the time. That couldn't possibly have covered our costs.

So the whole key was getting it into the high street stores. When he said yes to that, that was the ultimate clincher of what we could do and how much we could spend on it. We spent the equivalent of in today's money about 5 million pounds.

Django Nudo: That's a lot of money for a how-to video.

Robert Page: It was about 10 of our others put together. It was just extraordinary.

When the press started attacking us, in those days there wasn't that instant supply, so you couldn't restock overnight. So lots of the retail stores had it in stock, ready to release it one Monday. But then in the weeks before, the press went crazier and crazier, and it turned out, much to our chagrin, that some of the performers, as of course if we'd had any sense we could have suspected, were from the dodgier areas of this kind of filmmaking. Some of them turned out to be porn stars. And the press picked all that up. So, "I didn't know she was a tart," says sex doc Chris—headline all over the press.

Django Nudo: You mentioned earlier, these were real couples, especially Wendy Anne Paige and her husband. No relation to you. Paige spelled differently.

Robert Page: Yes, exactly.

Django Nudo: So did you put an advert in the newspapers or how did you find them?

Robert Page: Mostly the doctor found them. That was again another scandal when it turned out that he'd auditioned people in his consulting rooms and got them to do things without there being any other witness present, any nurse or... We didn't even know that. And some of them came from a rather dodgy agency, which is where the more explicit performers came from.

It was very, very hard to find people at all. We had what, six or seven couples in the original. I think only about two of them joined up in the audition line, so to speak, but became couples just so they could get the job, but that's performers for you.

Django Nudo: Yes, yes. Well, you know. And one of them actually went on to become effectively a star and continued in this series. Of course, talking about Wendy Anne Paige and her husband.

Robert Page: It's a tragic story, and it's not, a lot of people again turn against the Lover's Guide because of what happened after that. They made a lot of money out of being kind of sex therapists themselves and working...

Django Nudo: Became celebrities.

Robert Page: Then they went to Hollywood, and they were apparently with Jack Nicholson and things. But then Tony took her off to Thailand, where he was opening gentleman's clubs and getting up to all sorts of things. And then I'm afraid she developed a drug habit.

Django Nudo: A very expensive one.

Robert Page: Very expensive one, came back to Britain and died in penury last December. It was extraordinary that really her only major thing was the Lover's Guide. And yet, 30 years later, every newspaper from the Sun through to the Times had the story of her death. That sort of just shows how the Lover's Guide is still that significant that it can draw that kind of attention.

Django Nudo: Well, it was and it is a cultural landmark in films and sex education in British society of where things were at the time. And obviously when it came out and it sold like gangbusters, like any Hollywood hit, there was immediately pressure for a sequel. So tell us about how it continued and the next films and the directors that you went through, the new commentators you had, the new stars you had. It was a franchise like the Marvel Universe.

Robert Page: It didn't become that, but it nearly didn't happen at all in that the very weekend, because of all this bad press, all the stores pulled out. There were literal blank shelves where it should have been in stores. And on the Saturday, when it was supposed to be coming out on the Monday, Smiths had pulled out the night before. So they were the last people standing.

Then they got back together on the Monday morning and a wonderful guy called Tim Forestal said, "This is going to be the biggest film of the year." And by the by, we did knock "Die Hard" and "The Little Mermaid" off the top spot of the videos. When suddenly Smiths decided to release it, and then a big group called Asda did. And that was the first time I ever saw those ropes turning a block of people into a line. There were literally queues outside round the block to collect it.

So then there was great pressure to do number two, and then we did number two with a new director, and the ball started rolling. One of our most successful ones was just sex positions. You know, 50-odd sex positions where most people deal at best with two or three in their entire lives.

Django Nudo: Doggy and missionary and, you know. So as long as it didn't linger, you were fine to shoot all of that.

Robert Page: We absolutely were. Then we did an interactive one where the main shot, it was on DVD, so what was actually happening was the laser head was shifting between tracks, but it looked as if you could go from the general shot with a man and woman commentary showing two people together, or then you could go up to the man's position and just the male voice was talking to you, or you could click down to the woman and the woman commentator would be talking. So it was totally like seeing things from different points of view.

We also did a 3D one which got a cinematic release, which was very odd because, how can I put it? You didn't want to yawn when that was happening.

Django Nudo: Yeah, spears and things in 3D poking out at you.

Robert Page: Poking out at you, exactly. So there've been about 13 more—there's been an encyclopaedia, there've been books based on the video, there've been cards, little packs of cards that again had all sex positions in, you could leave around the house and go, "I'd like to do this tonight, darling." We did a gay sex deck as well, which sold fantastically.

Django Nudo: Were there copycats? Were there people trying to mimic what you do and get in on the sex education bandwagon?

Robert Page: Yeah, a little personal scar as an aside is that my wife at the time... So, here's a news blast for you. They're making a dramatic film of the making of "The Lover's Guide." It's in the works now. They're going to announce it, but you heard it first, but don't tell anybody I told you.

One of the arcs of that is that here's this guy, me, trying to make this thing about enhancing relationships and deepening one's sexual whatever. And at the same time his marriage is falling apart and his wife's actually gone off with his business partner and best friend.

Anyway, so then Stanway after the third one—he wrote and narrated those—goes off with her to make a rival Lover's Guide. You're talking about rivals?

Django Nudo: Truly rivals. Yeah.

Robert Page: Yeah, truly rivals. And I don't know why he did it. I still don't understand that kind of treachery. We'd made him a ton of money. So they did a thing that they called "Real Sex Lives," and Stanway thought he was bigger than the Lover's Guide brand and he wasn't, and it died a total death and that was that, and we never worked with him again, obviously.

Another interesting one was in the Netherlands where we were kind of a bit dumb back then. They signed up to get the rights for Lover's Guide for, I don't know, there was about $20,000 or something like that at the time. So we signed up, we get the $20,000. And instead of them releasing it, they do a rival film. What they've done is buy the rights to keep us off the market. So, buy and kill.

So then we started writing contracts that said, not only do you have to pay us X amount, you have to release the film within X number of months or you lose the rights. Who would have thought, you're giving us 10 grand, 20 grand and you're thinking, well, with that kind of investment, they've got to want to release it. But instead of that, they wanted to make their own.

Django Nudo: Old, old Hollywood tactic, you know, buy it and bury it and make your own.

Robert Page: And it's also a bit like the Swedish expression, much wants more. If you have much, you want even more. So I guess Mr. Stanway got greedy.

The Smut Peddler: And thought that he was the star of the film, which...

Django Nudo: It was like, "No, enough commentary. More Wendy Ann."

Robert Page: And I hate to say in retrospect, one of the amazing statistics in all of this, there were all sorts of surveys done, and we were 55% bought by women. Now that's remarkable. I think a lot of women want to say, watch this, do it like this, look after me like this, care about me like this. This is where a clitoris is. This is where most female pleasure comes from.

Django Nudo: Literally how to. Yeah.

Robert Page: Yeah. That was an accolade to us that actually we were so female friendly. But what I was going to say is sadly, I don't think Dr. Stanway was female friendly at all. He came across as a totally kind of egghead.

Django Nudo: No, and later on in the series, you had people like Tanya Cox and female experts come in, which I think works even better.

Robert Page: Yeah, I agree. Then we started turning to women and we had women directors. We tried to make it even more go towards female sensibilities, shall we say.

International Reception

Django Nudo: So, it formally pops up as an Anglo-French co-production. How was it perceived abroad? We talked about the Dutch example where they bought it and buried it, but was there press commentary from abroad? Was it selling anywhere else in numbers?

Robert Page: The reason it says French—actually there was no particular deal with France. It's just that it did happen to go gangbusters in France as well. But that was months later.

Django Nudo: No, but I'm amazed by that because, you know, the English teaching the French about sex. That's like teaching them about cheese or wine.

Robert Page: Or cooking. Yeah, I love it. No, that was just about sales, but we went all over the world. Stanway was on TV everywhere. Sad to say in America, we were pursued by Miramax and I'm afraid one Harvey Weinstein who bought it there. We only found out much later what a beast he was.

But Australia broke all records of video. At the time it was the only factual video to go to number one. They were all Hollywood blockbusters.

Django Nudo: Like I said, Die Hard and Bambi.

Robert Page: Yeah, that was quite something to knock those off the top spot. And we won video of the year and all that. It sold all around the world, I think.

Oh, and somebody wrote to me from China, Professor Ni. And he said, "I'd love to work with you. I work out of Hong Kong." And, "I've already done so much work on your programs." "Excuse me?" "Oh yeah, I've translated five of them into Chinese and they've sold like 4 million copies." And I went, "Thanks a lot."

Django Nudo: Where's the cheque?

Robert Page: One brass razoo from this. Pirates, even before the internet.

In Japan, the publisher who was doing the video also did a book, a beautiful book of it. I can't read it because I can't read Japanese. But anyway, they got busted by the police, raided, all the copies were destroyed. I happen to have a copy because they sent me one before it was released. But this went crazy there.

But there were places that it still couldn't be really shown. It did get into Ireland, but it was pirated into the South, I believe, but Northern Ireland was of course part of the UK. So all the Smiths and things had it there.

The Smut Peddler: But did you do any sort of Catholic versions where you took out the naughty bits?

Robert Page: I don't think there'd be about two minutes left, wouldn't there? People walking through fields and looking into each other's eyes. Bless.

Django Nudo: Were there any things as the series progressed that you couldn't include or were there any restrictions you felt?

Robert Page: Well, it's an interesting question because for the first three or four, we were not allowed to show ejaculation. That was verboten. And then we were.

Django Nudo: No money shot.

Robert Page: Yeah. It was funny, Tony and Wendy actually ended up in Desmond Morris's thing on telly then called "The Human Body" or something. And she even had a tiny camera stuck near her vagina and you see Tony's penis poking towards this camera. And then...

Django Nudo: Anything you do for science.

Robert Page: Ejaculates. So that was the first ejaculation on television. But when it's the camera inside—honestly, it's the most unsexy thing you've ever seen.

But that was after we'd been allowed to show that. There was a programme on telly already in 1993, there was a sex series with Margie Clark on UK TV. And that was getting like 12 million viewers late night. It's staggering. So, we opened flood gates as well.

I hear that, again, I can't prove this one, but apparently the Catholic Church changed its view on masturbation because of us. It started downplaying it because we'd said not only do 100% of boys, unless they're completely sexually neutral or something, do it, and about 87% of girls, something like that. And they went, "Well, you can't have this as a mortal sin, a sin you go to hell for, if everybody's doing it. It's just mad. Everybody's going to be in hell."

Django Nudo: But it was fascinating because it was very much part of, and the Guardian did a great article sort of "The Lover's Guide 30 years on, what did it change?" But pinpointing this very specific time in British society and culture. Like I said, you had that on TV a few years later, you had Eurotrash, which was very nudge-nudge wink-wink, but it really was a panopticon of what was happening on the continent elsewhere. You had the whole Lads magazines, Nuts and Loaded coming in. There was an openness but also a frankness which had been missing in the '80s and that eventually was completely unique to the '90s before we had the tsunami of the internet and everything that that brought along.

Robert Page: And personally, I reached the age of 18 in the summer of love. That was the first sexual revolution. That's when the pill had come out. It was still very difficult to get hold of. I remember going with someone to a Marie Stopes clinic to get the pill. It was just not that available, but it was available enough and it caused this amazing sexual revolution.

I remember the Stones concert in Hyde Park that year and half the people were stark naked in Hyde Park. Great times. And then it all went away. And then a lot of people are kindly saying that the Lover's Guide actually caused the second and even better and broader sexual revolution.

I don't think it led to PornHub and all of that. I think that was the internet. But we set a ball rolling that otherwise would have taken a different path perhaps. And I'm grateful that we got there before the internet and put a very decent view out there.

People go, so many people have said, all you did really was porn with a soundtrack. And that's so unfair. One judge said, the definition of a film is the pictures and the soundtrack. You can't just turn down the sound and say that that's one of the things wrong with this film that you could do that because that's not then the film. A whole part of it has been taken away.

So, I love that we got this thing made with its care and with its respect for the other sex, the opposite sex in both ways round and was about lovingness and decency and all of that before the whole tsunami of porn hit.

Django Nudo: No, it's the complete antithesis of what's being discussed today. And I don't want to get caught up in the current culture wars, but when they talk about incels and adolescents—this is what should be shown in schools or to people who want to have a healthy, normal relationship.

Watching it now, it's aged incredibly well. It could be used as an instructional video or help guide for couples today as much as when it was first released. Some things now look a bit more quaint. The mobile phone is huge in it. And it definitely has the aesthetic of sort of the soft focus and new age music, but at the core, it really is good for what it wants to achieve.

Robert Page: That's really good to hear. That's what we cared about. That's what we were trying to do. And that it still persists. And it was amazing that for our 30th anniversary, we both had the Guardian on one hand doing a double page spread and the Sun on the other hand, the ends of the British press, saying that it really does still have lots of lessons to teach us all. And that's just very gratifying. If I've done nothing else in my life but this, then I feel like I've given something to the world and I'm delighted and honoured and privileged and humbled by that.

The Smut Peddler: I think it's a great achievement. And also we see that our members of Cult Píx obviously love this; they eat it up because all of them are on the top 10 list. But I think that also has to do with the nostalgia factor together with the scientific part of it. It's a great combination right now when people are actually looking back for the good old days, really, because it's kind of chaotic right now and these films, the series point to another era.

Robert Page: Yeah. I think that's true. But I don't want to go back to these supposed family values where women are kept at home and have to go back to cooking and doing all that. And I don't believe that's what we're saying at all. And it's not a sort of Rockwell vision. And it's not saying you have to be married or any of those things, but it is saying that let's have love for one another. Let's care about one another. Let's care about relationships.

Django Nudo: And let's communicate, let's be open and non-judgmental.

Robert Page: Yeah, that's exactly what it says. Communicate, respect one another, enjoy one another, have fun together. It's all of those things that to me are the cement of relationships anyway.

Hollywood Stories and Legacy

Django Nudo: No, it's an incredible legacy and we're genuinely so delighted to be able to show it and hopefully introduce it to a completely new audience in terms of new generations, new countries, people who are probably not aware of it. And also to be able to explain about the unique history and the time when it came into being and the background. Is there anything we haven't covered? Is there anything else that you want to add to it?

Robert Page: One of the crazy stories that maybe I shouldn't be going down, but anyway, I'll share it with you because I'm feeling in a kind of frisky mood. One day I go to my office and the receptionist goes, "Rob, go to your phone right away." "

"Why?" "Stanley Kubrick's on the line. You've got to speak with him." And I'm going, "Don't mess with me. This is God." And she says, "If you're messing with me, you're fired." I wouldn't have fired her, but I was serious.

So I rush to my phone and I pick it up and I go, "Hello?" And this voice goes, "Hey, is that Robert Page? It's Stanley Kubrick here. I have a slight problem." "What would that be Mr. Kubrick, sir, God thing?" "Well, I'm making this film with Tom and Nicole and I can't get a spark between them. And I understand you know how to direct sex scenes and I need you to advise me."

So I said, "Sorry, Mr. Kubrick. You are the greatest director in the world. You have two of the best known actors in the world. They're married. And you want me to tell you how to get a spark between them and on the phone now?" And he went, "Yes, Robert, I'd say that's about the size of it."

Anyway, I've had maybe three ideas in my life and this wasted one of them. It's like having three gifts from the genie, the three wishes. So I suddenly went, well, there's this couple, Tony and Wendy. And this was pre-Viagra. And Tony could... No wonder he had a triple heart bypass.

So I said, well, there's this couple and he can keep it up all day. Why don't you get them to Pinewood? And film them and then edit it and then show it to Tom and Nicole and say, this is what I want. "Oh, Robert, that's just wonderful. What a great idea."

Anyway, then he puts me on the line to somebody else and we sort out the deal. I send off a non-disclosure agreement to Tony and Wendy, not mentioning Kubrick, Cruise, Kidman or anything. And then I send off a fee note to this guy who's at Warner Brothers. And then I forget about it.

About a year later, there's all this talk of this film called "Eyes Wide Shut." And I'm like, what? Anyway, then there's more talk. Then Kubrick finishes it and literally he finished editing it one day and dropped dead the next. Mind you, if I'd made that film, I'd have probably dropped dead too.

There is no real sex scene in it. There's one scene where Tom walks towards her and you see him in the mirror and he looks like he might, but it's from the navel up.

Suddenly about three months after that, the phones start going crazy from America. "Do you know that you're all over the National Enquirer?" "What?" "It says that you had to teach Tom and Nicole how to have sex." And I went, I don't even know if it happened. I think Tony or Wendy have dropped me right in it. Anyway, they were then hounded. They were in Hollywood, I think by that time. And they didn't know anything about it. Apparently, they'd never even got the original NDA. None of this had happened.

Then that night, I'm going home and there's a big picture of Tom and Nicole on the front of the Evening Standard. And I open it up and page three has a great big story about "Eyes Wide Shut" and Rob Page from the Lover's Guide had to teach them how to have sex. Oh, no!

The next morning, I'm going into the office and there's one of those little grey men there with one of these buff envelopes. And he hands it to me and he goes, "You're served." I opened this up and it says, "In the matter of Tom Cruise, you've ruined Kubrick's greatest last film. We're suing you for the cost of the film, $40 million dollars. So pay up and that's it."

So I get my lawyers involved and I get them to get full disclosure because their lawyers are going, "We've got you because your signature's everywhere." So they faxed back all this stuff. This stuff had obviously been faxed around the world because everything was blurred, but you could still read it. Anyway, there was the NDA, which didn't mention Cruise and Kidman. And there was the fee note to Warner Brothers, which did talk about all that stuff.

I put on my Miss Marple detective hat and thought, what on earth is going on here? And it struck me that, well, you've got a film that's not doing well. What do you do? You create this whole scandal around it. And the Lover's Guide connection is going to get you loads of coverage.

There were certain rumours about Tom and Nicole at the time that we can't go into, but were also fuelling all of this. So I got my lawyers to say that we were counter-suing for $50 million dollars for dragging our name into this. And it suddenly went away. Isn't that funny?

Then there was another one with Heather Mills McCartney where I'm walking down the street about to meet one of my sons and my phone goes off and this voice, typical British tabloid reporter goes, "Is that Robert Page?" "Yes." "We've got these porn pictures. I just need to describe them to you. You know it's hardcore porn, won't you, Mr. Page?"

"If you want to send them to me, I'll give you my professional opinion on these pictures." "No, look, I just need to describe them. You'll know right away." "Well, okay, what are you talking about? Who is this celebrity?" "Oh, I can't tell you that, sir, but anyway, this person who happens to be of the female gender is about to go down on a man's manhood, and it's got cream on it. And so that's porn, isn't it?"

I said, "It sounds like every man's dream to me." So he went through a whole thing that they're in the shower, playing. I'm going, "No, that's just perfectly normal activity."

Anyway, next day, this thing with Heather Mills McCartney, it's before she lost her leg. It'd been made in Germany and this German book had all these pictures. The headline read, "This is not a Lover's Guide. This is hardcore porn, says Robert Page." As if I'd written a whole story.

Mind you, wonderfully, it spent all its time saying the Lover's Guide is great and does all these good things where this is porny and does all these bad things. So loads of my friends rang me up and went, "How did you get a whole full page publicity..."

Django Nudo: Free advertising.

Robert Page: ...in the Sun, which is the most read newspaper in Britain. Anyway, there you go. Brushes with celebrity and fame.

Django Nudo: The cultural impact of Lover's Guide goes way beyond what I even had imagined.

Robert Page: Talking about the legacy, truly. I'm so pleased you guys are putting it out there. I hope it does a lot more good. In the early days, we got about 10,000 letters. And apart from Mary Whitehouse, not one said, this is bad, this is porn. What most of them boiled down to was, "We started watching your programme. We haven't had sex in X years. And we were having sex on the living room carpet before it was even finished. And we were doing it in the most loving and wonderful way and you've saved our marriage and we can't thank you enough." We had thousands of those letters and that's pretty well what they all boiled down to.

The more you can get it out there, the more people who can enjoy it and enjoy each other and love one another because by God, that's what we need, love in this world because there's too much divisive politics and all that stuff. We all seemed to be on a very positive upward line. And now we just seem to be slipping back yet again. And I just so regret that. Human life is so precious, so wonderful. I've had the most wonderful life and the most wonderful times and I hate to see it slipping back. I just hope this stops very soon and whatever we can do to have a little tiny impact on making this a better world to live in, I'm hugely grateful.

Django Nudo: Well, I think that's such a positive and good note to finish on in the spirit of the Lover's Guide. So, huge thank you Robert Page for talking to us and sharing this wonderful message about these incredible films on Cult Píx. Let's hope loads of people will benefit from this and love one another even more.