Of all the talks during the Museum of Sex Objects exhibition that recently finished at London’s Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury, the talk by Westward Bound supremo Steve Beech was the one I knew I could not afford to miss.

Steve and I boast a shared history that goes back almost 40 years to 1983, when he launched London fetish club Der Putsch close on the stiletto heels of the original Skin Two club (with which I had more than a passing association).

Our paths crossed very regularly during my subsequent two-decades-plus on Skin Two magazine. And that continued, pleasurably if less frequently, in our subsequent careers.

I went on to launch The Fetishistas’ magazine and directory websites in London. Steve, based in Plymouth, oversaw the transformation of his Westward Bound business from the original ‘bed, breakfast and bondage’ establishment and BDSM-orientated shop into a leading international latex fashion brand.

You didn’t (and still don’t) have to spend much time in Steve’s company to become aware of the man’s singular intellect. He’s the possessor of a fast and analytical mind — an art- and design-loving kinkster who combines left-leaning politics with a sharp business brain.

All these qualities were soon revealed to the audience packing the Horse Hospital’s basement for the Steve Beech London talk on September 16.

Beech was introduced by the two women jointly responsible for the four-week exhibition and talks programme. These were museum ‘keeper’ Deborah Sim and event producer Michelle Olley (who, like me, has known Steve since her own days at Skin Two).

Images from a four-decade career

Steve had chosen to present his talk in the form of a running commentary on the substantial slideshow he’d assembled covering his four-decade fetish career.

Its visuals ranged from the earliest Der Putsch flyers to Westward Bound’s latest and most prestigious cultural project: contributing specially commissioned latex costumes and images to the Cottonian Collection at Plymouth’s Box Museum.

Part of my interest in attending this talk — alongside its obvious potential for sheer nostalgia — was to see how, as a friend but also a longtime documenter of fetish culture, my perspective on Steve’s history would compare with his own telling of it.

At the start of the evening I probably knew more about him than many in the audience. But by the end of this Steve Beech London talk, there was also much about his journey that I realised I either hadn’t known, or might have just forgotten.

For example, I found depths in the detail he offered about his early Der Putsch flyers and later Westward Bound promo imagery that seemed to have escaped me when I’d original encountered this material.

A lot of the images from those early London club flyers that flashed up on the screen triggered long-buried memories for me, along the lines of “I remember that one!” and “Yes, I was at that party!”.

There was, for example, the Der Putsch night in Covent Garden that was one of my very first clubbing dates with the woman I would later marry.

There was the party at the cellar wine bar near the Barbican Centre that was probably one of the most atmospheric, upmarket venues Der Putsch had ever occupied. The venue banned the club immediately after its first and only night there.

Penultimate Putsch brings a new pal

There was Der Putsch’s penultimate party ever, at a west London pub. It was there that I first met Lisa Sherman, who would go on to be both a close friend and valuable editorial ally at Skin Two.

Steve had clearly thought people would also be interested in who the flyer artists were and how the graphics had been created in the days before computer-generated everything. And he was right.

Younger members of the audience were intrigued to discover that in those days, a flyer layout (complete with hand-applied Letraset headlines) would be physically pasted-up and then duplicated on a photocopier! It was lo-fi but it was our-fi!

Many of the flyers, promo graphics and photographs Steve included had interesting anecdotes attached.

It was good to be reminded of the B&W catalogue photography by Richard