'Digital is going to wipe out the soft porn magazine market,' he predicts. 'They're happy to bend down and pick up a newspaper, but if they hover around the magazines too long, they get paranoid that people think they're going to make a dive for the top shelf. 'News stands can be intimidating places for men,' reckons Ciaran Casey, chief executive of Harmonia - which publishes Ireland's only men's magazine, Irish Tatler Man. When it comes to X-rated reading material, today's Irish men are more likely to stretch for their smartphone than the top shelf, according to the country's leading magazine publisher. With free online porn fast outstripping old-fashioned nudie mags however, even the publishing powerhouse is struggling to keep its numbers up. Sure enough, by the turn of the millennium, Playboy was shifting nearly 10,000 copies per month this side of the Atlantic - making it the most popular import after Time and Newsweek.

But people bought it, and they bought the next number of issues, and it became the norm.' 'I had two stores at the time and, to be perfectly honest with you, all I remember thinking is that it was extraordinarily overpriced. 'I remember when the ban on Playboy was lifted,' tells the former newsagent. Looking back on the moment the 34-year ban was overturned on appeal, Convenience Stores & Newsagents Association chief executive Vincent Jennings recalls being scandalised - not at the sight of a near-naked Pamela Anderson on the cover, but at the £4.90 price tag. Meanwhile, Playgirl - founded in response to Hugh Hefner's girlie magazine - remains blacklisted for being 'indecent or obscene'.

Two decades are about to pass since the ban on the iconic American lad's mag was lifted by Ireland's Censorship of Publications Board. 'Perhaps now on the 20th anniversary of the unbanning of Playboy in Ireland, it's time to make Playgirl legal too.' 'But I think it's a perfect example of the double standard in our culture that celebrates straight men's sexuality, whilst viewing that of women and gay men as shameful. 'I'm shocked that Playgirl is still banned in Ireland,' she says. Speaking to Review, SexSiopa.ie founder Shawna Scott this week urged censors to 'Play' fair over soft porn in 2015. Twenty years after Playboy first hit top shelves here, sale of the feminist answer to the title is still prohibited. One of Ireland's top sex shop owners has called for the ban on Playgirl magazine to be lifted.

Playgirl magazine archive