It was staged at New York’s prestigious Danceteria club and attracted thousands of people hoping to catch a glimpse of the man whose lovingly detailed depictions of women in bondage are unrivalled to this day.

In Europe, Stanton’s classic work from the ’50s was most recently revived by a French publisher called Editions Dominique Leroy, which in 1970 published three collections titled The Best of Stanton, complete with French translations. Surprisingly, however, these beautifully printed stiff-cover books were published without any kind of approval from Stanton himself.

Perhaps, like many of his fans, the French publisher assumed Stanton had gone to that great art studio in the sky!

But in fact he’s alive and well, and angry enough about these French books and various other unlicensed uses of his work to have made a flying visit to Britain and Europe at the end of October in pursuit of financial settlement, giving us the rare opportunity to meed this man who was the contemporary of John Willie, Irving Klaw and Bettie Page.

At 58, Stanton seems to have lost no enthusiasm for his obsession. He has his own publishing company, churns out illustrated fantasy books by the cartload, and produces an illustrated catalogue which is a highly collectable artefact in itself.

Quietly spoken, studious-looking and articulate, Eric Stanton has a fund of stories about that seminal Irving Klaw era, many of which seem to revolve around his being ripped off by unscrupulous publishers and by other artists.

Typically, it seems, publishers would pay him as little as $25 for an original illustration which they would later sell for as much as $1000. The fact that people are still trying it on 30 years later tends to confirm the impression of a man for whom business matters come as very much a poor second to job satisfaction!

But one thing he says he has learnt is never again to supply original artwork to anybody. “That way,” he explains, at least I’m going to be able to make provision for my kids.”

Coming to Britain he travelled light, bringing just a few individual examples of his current output. He’d heard that things had got a bit hot on this particular front at Customs and wanted to minimise the chance of any trouble.

“I do some of the most tasteless things in the world,” he confesses with a wry grin, “but I do it only because I’m commissioned to do it, and I have this inner feeling that I have to do whatever anybody wants me to do, because I satisfied myself for so many years — and I feel so rounded for it — that I feel people should be able to see anything they want. As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, I think we’re entitled to our own sexual pleasures.

“I get letters from people all over the world saying ‘Thank God for you, Eric Stanton’ because I’ve been able to satisfy their inner desires. At the moment I’m producing seven or eight books a year — ten books this year. I do almost all of it myself though I do sometimes buy artwork if I feel it’s got something to say.”

It was New York publisher Irving Klaw who gave Stanton his first professional break. Somebody had done some poor drawings for Klaw, Stanton saw them and contacted Klaw to offer his services.

“At the time he was selling movie stills and he found that a lot of people were coming in specifically to buy bondage scenes or fighting scenes So he started putting those aside so when people came in he had them right handy.

“And there was a famous lawyer who came to him, who was very interested in bondage, and suggested he made his own photographs. And I came to him saying why not make your own photographs of fighting girls, and said I’d do a cartoon story of fighting girls. And that’s how we got started.

“I was working for a newspaper strip at the time — I wasn’t much of an artist but it got me into a field that was giving me money. Not much, but a living — $60 wasn’t too bad in 1948. I kept at it because I liked it, it gave me a lot of satisfaction. Money isn’t everything as long as you know somebody’s finding a great deal of pleasure out of it.”

What about his contemporary, John Willie, creator of the famous bondage heroine Gwendoline?

“He influenced me a great deal,” says Stanton — a claim borne out by his own famous sequel to Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline titled Sweeter Gwen.