Honey was included in Larry Flynt's Hustler's Top 50 Most Hated People in Porn list, printed in the January 1999 issue and in 2011, he was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame.
[7] Following expulsion from school in 1973, he moved to Newquay, Cornwall where he worked as a children's entertainer called "Uncle Simon" and drummed in a cabaret band for the summer season.
[8][9] Using the pseudonym Lindsay Honey as he "didn't think Simon fitted the bill somehow", he began working as a session drummer for artists such as Edison Lighthouse and White Plains.
[13] Honey also worked as a cabaret singer under the pseudonym "Steve Jackson"[9] and briefly reunited with Mitchell to form "Bachelor Of Hearts" who released one album in 1983 to little fanfare (a version of the track "Girls in Jeans" was later used as the outro music on Ben Dover films).
In 1978, broke from his dwindling career as a musician and working as a male stripper using the stage name "Hot Rod" (due to his reported likeness to Rod Stewart at the time), Honey responded to an advertisement for models in The Stage newspaper and met agent Kent William Boulton (1941–2002),[14] a college lecturer from Bromley and former Labour Party candidate on the Isle of Wight who entered the porn business late in life and was renowned for organising "spanking parties".
[21] Freeman had produced softcore porn throughout the 1960s via his company Climax Films, and employed well known Soho gangster Gerald Patrick Joseph Hawley as a bodyguard.
[22] Upon release from prison in 1979, Freeman set about exploiting the Obscene Publications Act, which didn't yet cover the new video format, and started producing hardcore pornography.
Operating from their home, Corner Cottage in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey, they sold hardcore pornographic films under various names such as Stephanie Perry and Glamour Pussy Video Club via adverts in magazines.
Upon release in the United States, the Ben Dover films were edited by VCA Pictures to censor the more graphic contents of the original productions.
[35] It wasn't until 2004 that he again attempted to obtain US distribution for his films and signed a deal with Kick Ass Pictures and resurrected the Ben Dover brand.
[36] Honey also hosts "Ben Dover Porn Disco"s involving wet t-shirt competitions[37] and "SwingalongaBen" swinging parties in Aston, Birmingham.
He would advocate the dismantling of the Royal Family, branding them an "outdated, irrelevant and frankly dangerous institution", removing any power from the church and reforming the National Health Service and would "make patients at A&E departments who are there as a result of pub fights etc, be made to pay a serious levy for the expense of treating them".
The company claimed their sales and profits had plummeted due to organised crime gangs flooding the streets with pirated DVDs of their titles.
[52] The company then engaged in a campaign of "speculative invoicing", where they sent out letters, initially through lawyers, to alleged copyright infringers demanding a payment of £700 or face the threat of potential court action: a scheme described by the House of Lords as "straightforward legal blackmail" and a scam.
Following adverse public and press reaction, Tilly Bailey & Irvine abandoned the practice and accepted a £2,800 fine from the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
[57] In 2011, the company lost a court case against an internet user who they claimed had illegally downloaded the Ben Dover film "Fancy An Indian?
[58] Timothy Dutton QC of the Solicitors Regulation Authority noted that as computer IP addresses can be shared, faked and hijacked, the evidence being used was of the "flimsiest" variety.
[60] Judge Birss QC highlighted similarities between this and a previous case involving Media CAT Limited and lawyers ACS:Law who unsuccessfully tried to sue 27 individuals for alleged copyright infringement, as Media CAT Limited were not the rights holders of the copyrighted material in question and led to ACS:Law ceasing to trade.
In order for the case to progress in the Patents County Court, the actual copyright holder, Optime Strategies Limited (who trade as Ben Dover Productions), would have to have joined Golden Eye (Julian Becker is a director of both companies) and "potentially put themselves at risk of becoming liable for a wasted costs claim if the case were to fail like ACS:Law's did".
[70] It was revealed in December 2012 that the IP data supplied to O2 (UK)/Telefónica Europe by Golden Eye, from 2,850 alleged copyright infringements of Ben Dover Production films could only be matched to less than 1,000 individuals.