No censorship please - we're grown-ups, aren't we?

There's porn and there's 'adult entertainment', campaigners tell Hester Lacey

MOST AWARD ceremonies are a predictable round of luvviedom and back-slapping. The 18 Awards are rather different. Specifically for "adult" entertainment, last year's gongs were given out at a ceremony featuring nude body-painted show-girls mingling with the assorted celebs at the Savoy Hotel, and "lithe beautiful men masquerading as wild animals" ushering the guests. James Brown, formerly of Loaded, walked off with the award for Favourite Publication, Trainspotting won Favourite Movie, Joanne Guest was Favourite Pin-Up, and J G Ballard was presented with the Golden Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The awards were launched by a new organisation, Web And Media British Alternative Media (WAMBAM); its mission is to "celebrate the huge breadth of arts and entertainment produced and intended for adults". Their current project is an anti-censorship campaign intended to encourage the Government to hand over responsibility for who watches what to the individual.

"Adult" entertainment can't help but sound a bit sleazy; well, that shouldn't be the case, says WAMBAM's Anna Stokes firmly. Anna, 24, first-class honours graduate in Communications and former model, joined WAMBAM at its launch and organised the first 18 Awards ceremony. "The awards are for mainstream adult entertainment, not pornography," she explains. "We had a great reaction when we launched them, and that led us to start the campaign - we wanted to give the general public a chance to get involved."

The other half of WAMBAM is Henry Cobbold, heir to the Knebworth Estate and latest scion of a family which has a long and proud tradition of this kind of thing. His great-great-great grandfather was instrumental in an 1832 campaign to abolish dramatic censorship; the campaign was a failure, but his grandfather Lord Cobbold was eventually instrumental in its abolition in the Sixties. "WAMBAM fully endorses the protection of children through effective classification and control of the distribution of adult materials," thunders Cobbold. "However, censorship of adult materials is demeaning and insulting to public intelligence."

Initially, WAMBAM are setting up a petition to be presented at 10 Downing Street, demanding a shake-up of the current system of film and video classification. "The 1959 Obscene Publications Act has never been reviewed," says Anna. "Classification as it stands is unfair - it is decided by a government body, mostly people of a generation who are not in touch with the media of today." For those below the age of 18, she says, classification should be taken more seriously than it is at the moment; but after that, "Responsibility should go to adults to decide what they watch. We want people to be able to say 'Yes, I want to see this' or 'No, I don't want to see it' without someone else making the decision for them. The main thing is to let people think for themselves; if something is repressed people simply want to see it all the more and you get the tacky underworld of adult entertainment. The whole concept of 'adult' entertainment needs redefining." WAMBAM will be presenting their petition at 10 Downing Street later this year. They also plan a web-site with bulletins of their own about new releases; the public will be invited to write in to agree or disagree and add comments. In the meantime, they are planning the 1998 18 Awards ceremony. The awards, which are in the shape of a man and a woman entwined together, will be handed out this year on 24 April at London's Alexandra Palace.