Sex In The 80s: Madam Cyn's Home Movies (C4): The exploits of Cynthia Payne were a godsend for headline writers - THE WAGES OF CYN screamed one - and provided endless pleasure for policemen, politicians and other pillars of society.

But as Madam Cyn told us in her jolly way: "Everyone's the same when they've got their trousers down".

What went on behind closed doors in her house in the leafy South London suburb of Streatham was "very much like a vicarage tea party - with sex thrown in".

The Sex In The 80s series opened with a bright, breezy, bawdy romp through the exploits of the Luncheon Vouchers madam. You can't help but admire a woman whose pricing policy was to charge £20 at the door, £5 off for OAPs and half-price "if they were past it".

And she'd always admit two disabled blokes without charging them. "My little bit towards society," she said.

She was "discerning without being discriminating" which is, perhaps, something to which we should all aspire.

She wasn't doing anyone any harm and, like a charity worker, provided after-care by serving customers poached eggs and a cup of Bovril.

Everyone got what they wanted out of it. Even Payne herself, and I don't mean the money. She had slave Rodney, who served trays of sandwiches to guests as well as doing all the cleaning and tidying.

He only got turned on when she wore high heels and rode him like a horse. She made it sound just like Roy Rogers and Trigger. "That turned him on and I got my housework done, so I couldn't grumble," she chuckled.

The programme showed her home movies to demonstrate Rodney's peccadillo. It wasn't something I've ever seen at the Horse of the Year show.

Other guests she recalled included a barrister, who'd arrive from court, put on a frock and become Aunt Maud, and the man who dressed as a baby.

"All those things I found fascinating," she said. And so do we. There's nothing quite like peeping behind the net curtains in suburbia, especially to see good dirty fun as opposed to something sordid.

The police tried to close her down, a strategy hampered when the surveillance team spotted a chauffeur-driven car from the Scotland Yard motorpool delivering a top-ranking police officer to the palace of pleasure in Ambleside Avenue.

When police raided the house they found 53 men and 13 women in bedrooms, kitchen and on the stairs. "Stop what you are doing, stay exactly where you are, this is a police raid," they ordered.

One customer found in flagrante refused. "I've paid so I'm not stopping," she recalls him telling police.

Our attitude to the whole affair - which played like an old Ealing comedy with sex - was summed up in a cartoon published the day after she left court a free woman. It showed the foreman of the jury standing up and saying "We find the defendant not guilty, but can we hear the evidence all over again."