It was conceived as a money-making bit of mischief by theatre critic Kenneth Tynan he enlisted the likes of Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard and John Lennon to add an avant-garde air to his juvenile joke. Hair was an instant hit – even if the nudity, as well as the show’s explicit scenes of drug-taking and its anti-Vietnam War message, angered some critics.Īnother show to take advantage of the end of censorship was the revue Oh! Calcutta!, which in 1969 staged bawdy sketches and erotic dances, after the entire cast stripped off in the first scene. The hippy rock-musical saw the cast get their kit off at the end of the first half, emerging in the altogether from beneath a giant sheet. And the musical suggests that during WWII, beleaguered Brits were buoyed by the sight of bosoms, a show-must-go-on defiance equating to the plucky British ‘Blitz spirit’. Yes, there is full-frontal nudity – even if the men in the cast have to bare-all first, in a token nod to gender equality. This story was told in the British film Mrs Henderson Presents, starring Judi Dench, in 2005 now, it’s shimmied onto the stage in London in an all-new musical version by Terry Johnson. Bare bottoms, it turned out, meant bums on seats – and the theatre was the only one not to close during World War Two.

The Windmill soon became the most popular theatre in town, its static, classical tableaux of de-robed lovelies proving more of a draw than any song-and-dance routine. So twigged Mrs Laura Henderson, owner of an ailing West End theatre in the 1930s – and she also got around the stage censor by promising that her cast of nude young ladies wouldn’t move a muscle. There’s nothing like the promise of naked flesh to shift tickets.

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