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Mike Arlen, the legendary male nudes photographer and gay pornography publisher, died earlier this month. Long-term friend, ‘Mike Arlen guy’, writer, performer – and naked yoga teacher – Adam Clifford remembers one of gay London’s most flamboyant characters and a pioneer of gay male erotica.
Mike Arlen was a legendary photographer and pornographer. Born in London in 1935 to an Irish father and cockney landlady mother – ‘My mother was almost perfect,’ he would often be heard to say – he was a child actor and in the 1950s became a showbiz journalist, interviewing Dirk Bogarde among others.
While photographing the fashion and pop world of London in the 1960s, his Earls Court apartment became a salon for celebrities, the velvet mafia and prison boys.
Launched in the 1980s, his pioneering nude magazine Mike Arlen’s Guys was routinely stolen by men across the UK from local newsagents, and he sold prints of East End strays photographed under Hollywood lights to collectors around the world.
A ‘Mike Arlen guy’ was a special geezer as Mike had to be the best in his racket! He would refer to me as his ‘favourite exhibitionist and bisexual’.
We were kindred spirits, both knowing the toils of selling sex – him through photographic stimulation, me through teaching naked yoga.
We both had endless totty around. Over the years our friendship grew with trips to the BFI Southbank and the theatre. In later years he would hold on to my arm when we walked down the busy Earl’s Court Road, still as proud as ever – ‘Independent to the bitter end,’ he would remark.
I was proud to be one of his models, and to play him in a play about his life, which is being produced by an exciting, avant-garde crew who recognise Mike’s legacy and aim to bring his work to the art world and its respectable institutions.
Mike Arlen’s Earl’s Court apartment
His images gave men happy respite from their shame. Mike was one of the most generous men I ever met: those knowing, scanning eyes, a certain sense of humour and a theatrical mode of speech that dies with his generation.
I’m sad about that. Fuck, I will miss him.
I have my memories of us laughing together: dinners in and out, mad guests, wonky London in all its fascinating glory. I shall impart some of that spirit. He gave me my education in queer history. Lucky me – I got to be part of it with a master.
Mike Arlen passed away on Monday 7th November 2022.
You can follow Adam Clifford’s work – including his play about Mike Arlen – on Instagram at @ryanbenjaminclifford
If you’re interested in Adam’s naked yoga classes, check out @nakedyogageezer on Instagram
Adam Clifford was photographed by Mike Arlen for the cover of Dirtyboyz in an issue which featured an interview feature on Mike which you can read below.
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