Part memoir and part social history, this book is a collection of short stories drawing on Robbie Swan’s 25 years as a magazine editor and parliamentary lobbyist for the adult industry.

Wry, candid and funny, it is a behind-the-scenes look at the remarkable profiles of people behind the intersection of sex, politics and power. In the book, Swan reveals the human side of an often-misunderstood industry: the humour, the resilience and the strange, sometimes surreal encounters that shaped a generation of activists and outsiders.

Spanning half a century and bookended by the creation of the Australian Sex Party with his partner, trailblazing MP Fiona Patten, these stories chart how a life spent challenging taboos and fighting hypocrisy ultimately helped reshape public debate and law reform.

About the speakers

Robbie Swan and Fiona Patten ran Australia’s adult industry association (the Eros Association) for 25 years before founding The Australian Sex Party and getting Fiona elected to the Victorian Parliament. In her 8 years in the Upper House she proved to be one of the most successful independent MPs, chairing the influential Legal and Social Issues Committee and initiating over a dozen pieces of socially progressive legislation including voluntary assisted dying, legalising Uber, decriminalising sex work, implementing spent convictions laws and abortion law reform.  

Robbie has been a magazine editor for many years publishing Simply Living, Matilda, Kookaburra, Ecstasy, Raider’s Country and the Eros Journal. In the early 1970s he was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s florist and in the late 70s he presented the Interchange program on Canberra’s public radio station 2XX. In the late 80s he produced Phillip Adams’ radio show on 2UE.