BOING! TIME FOR BEDS!
INSIDE! Our frankly disappointing exposé of XXX grumble star BEN DOVER’s 40 years in the porn biz!
HAVING sex with countless attractive women as a porn actor is every man’s dream career, even if they say it isn’t. And one man who has truly lived that dream is Ben Dover. But for the 61-year-old veteran of over 2000 adult films, the sex is just a pleasant bonus, because Dover’s first love is BEDS.
In an exclusive interview with
People’s Friend magazine, Ben revealed that it was his love of beds that first made him want to become a porn star. “I’ve always loved beds of all shapes and sizes,” he said. “And I always knew that I wanted to do something with beds for a living.”
luck
When he left school, Dover applied for numerous jobs in bed shops in and around his native Surrey, without success. He was ready to give up when a friend suggested that he might like to try his luck in the porn film industry. He decided to give it a go and passed the audition, but his first outing into the bed world of adult films was almost his last.
“I remember my first scene as it were yesterday,” he told the magazine. “I was playing a sports instructor or something and the action would be taking place on a traditional king-sized wooden bed with a Hypnos pocket sprung mattress.”
“I just couldn’t wait to jump on and try it out. Up close, it was actually more like a superking, and the headboards and footboards had a distressed wax finish,” he continued.
“The scene got underway and I was having sex with three or four blondes, I can’t remember exactly. Suddenly I noticed that the bed was moving more than it should with each of my thrusts.”
Dover signalled to the director to cut, and the director came over to inspect the bed frame.
pourri
“He discovered that the bolt holding on one of the side rails was loose at the headboard end,” said Dover. “A couple more pushes and the rail would have dropped, causing untold damage to the joint at the foot end,” he continued.“With the bolt tightened, filming restarted and Dover completed the scene, ejaculating onto the breasts of his co-stars. But the incident with the bed left him shaken and wondering if he had made the right career choice.
After a few weeks and several more unsuccessful job applications to bed shops, Dover once again stepped onto the set of a scud flick.
He recalled: “I can’t remember what the plot of the next film was, but I was playing the part of a man who had sex with two women. And I was very excited because it was to be filmed in a hotel.”
However, Dover’s excitement soon turned to disappointment when he arrived on set.
“I’d imagined it would be somewhere like the Ritz or the Dorchester where they would have enormous plush Duxiana beds that retail for £3000 plus. But when I arrived, I discovered it was being shot at one of those budget hotels on the edge of a trading estate.”
noodle
Dover went up to the room and found that his two co-stars, a blonde and a brunette in their early twenties, were already on the bed wearing stockings and suspenders, filming a lesbian scene.
“The bed they were on was a standard sized double. It was just a basic box divan with a low to middle quality mattress on top,” he said. “Standing in that cramped room, looking at that cheap bed, the seediness of the whole affair suddenly hit me, and I vowed there and then that this film would be my last.”
However, when Dover stripped off and climbed onto the bed to join in with the girls, he found himself pleasantly surprised. “I wouldn’t say it was the most comfortable bed I’ve ever been in, but it was certainly better than it looked,” he confessed. “There was no movement when I was pounding away at the women, and only the slightest of squeaks from the underframe when I got to the vinegar strokes, which, to be honest, you even get in many top of the range beds.”
“Perhaps I’d been a little hasty,” he added.
plant
Dover went on to become one of the hottest names in the adult entertainment industry. At the height of his career, he was making three or four films per week, and he could afford to be choosy about what sorts of beds featured in his movies.
“I made it a rule to never make a film that didn’t involve a bed,” he said. “Often, a director would call and ask if I wanted to shoot a video which involved me shagging a woman in the back of a stretch limo, on a sofa, or in a pub after closing. I would simply say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’”
Dover broke his golden rule only once, and lived to regret his decision. “It was a film called Anal Nurses 3, and I played a man who has sex with two nurses,” he recalled. “It was being shot at the director’s house, and I’d heard he had a wonderful Relyon X2100 from their SleepTight range. It was easily one of the nicest beds I’d ever been asked to work on, so to say I was excited when I arrived to do my scenes would be an understatement.”
paige
“The director cum cameraman had made his bedroom look like a hospital by putting some flowers and grapes on the bedside table. And with my two co-stars dressed in nurses’ uniforms from the Ann Summers shop, the set-up looked quite convincing. But then, disaster.”
The two nurses stripped Dover naked and pushed him back onto the bed when he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his hand.
“I looked down and saw that one of the springs was poking through the mattress,” he said. “I ordered the girls off the bed immediately and carried out a spot-check. To my horror, I saw that there were a couple of other worn areas with exposed springs. I told the director that there was no way shooting could go ahead on that mattress.”
“Thinking quickly, he suggested that we shoot the film in the kitchen instead. The girls could remove their nurses’ hats and the film could be retitled Waitress Whores. I would play a man who had sex with two waitresses in a kitchen,” he continued.
bonham
“I told him that I wasn’t interested. After all, I had already learned my lines. But the director said that he had already paid the girls £10 for two hours’ work. I felt a little sorry for him, so I agreed to give it a go.”
Without the bed, Dover found himself facing every male porn actor’s nightmare.
“Put simply, I couldn’t get it up,” he confessed. “Both of the girls were on the worktop by the toaster. They were pleasuring each other while I watched, but nothing was happening, if you get my drift. It looked like the film might have to be re-retitled Lesbian Waitress Whores.”
“Then I remembered, I had some magazines in the boot of my car and I nipped out to get them. When I came back, the director’s wife acted as fluffer whilst I flicked through the latest Slumberland and Sleepeezy catalogues. Five minutes later, I was raring to go, and needless to say, we got the scene in the bag.”
Now, to celebrate his 35 years in the hardcore industry, Dover has released
My Life in Beds, a no-holes-barred autobiography. “I must have had sex with over 4000 women in probably about half as many beds in my time, and I’ll tell you all about them in this book,” he said.
“The beds, that is, not the birds.”
My Life in Beds by Ben Dover (with Jack Hargreaves), is published by Toast Topper Books (79p).
Bongo vid Ben can’t get enough action between the sheets