Ben Dover
Simon James Honey, better known as Ben Dover, is an English pornographic actor, director and producer. He has also worked under several other pseudonyms including Steve Perry as producer and Lindsay Honey as an actor and musician.
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.
Honey has also won a host of awards for the Ben Dover series including the Breakthrough Award at the AVN Awards in 1997, AVN's Best Gonzo Award twice. In 2006, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the UK Adult Film Awards, which he co-presented with Kristyn Halborg, Kelly Stafford and co-star Pascal White.
In 2012, Honey was nominated by the Internet Service Providers Association as an Internet Villain for his involvement with his company Golden Eye in speculative invoicing.
Biography
Early days in the music industry
Born in Sittingbourne, Kent to Sylvia and Frank Cyril Honey, Honey attended Borden Grammar School. 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.Using the pseudonym Lindsay Honey, he began working as a session drummer for artists such as Edison Lighthouse and White Plains. Honey joined Artful Dodgers who released one single "Here We Go" in 1978 before changing their name to 20th Century Heroes.
Following a chance meeting in a taxi between the band's guitarist, Paul Jackson. and one time Bay City Rollers bassist Ian Mitchell, the band agreed to be Mitchell's backing band. The Ian Mitchell Band was launched in May 1979. Although the band were not successful in the UK, they released three studio albums within a single year and toured across Europe and Japan. Following the departure of Jackson, the band changed their name to La Rox and reinvented themselves as a glam rock band, with Honey becoming the band's keyboard player. The change made little impact on the band's fortunes in the UK, and they split up in 1982. Honey, along with the band's second drummer John Towe and guitarist Lea Hart scored a minor UK hit, under the name Small Ads, with the one-off single "Small Ads", released in April 1981.
Honey also worked as a cabaret singer under the pseudonym "Steve Jackson" and briefly reunited with Mitchell to form "Bachelor Of Hearts" who released one album in 1983 to little fanfare.
Early adult film work
In 1978, Honey broke from his dwindling career as a musician and working as a male stripper using the stage name "Hot Rod", Honey responded to an advertisement for models in The Stage newspaper and met agent Kent William Boulton. Boulton was 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".Being paid £150 a shoot, Honey started working for Berth Milton Sr, publisher of Private Magazine and other European hardcore porn magazines such as Rodox/Color Climax, a Danish company. His first shoot was with a then 17-year-old Eileen Daly, who had gone to see the same agent above a strip club in Soho with her mother. Honey was introduced by Boulton to the photographer Lexington Steel and director Mike Freeman.
Working for Videx Ltd.
Honey began working as an actor for Mike Freeman's Videx Ltd. in 1980, a video production company based in Wimbledon. 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. He was jailed in December 1969 for the murder of Hawley, reportedly after he tried to take over Freeman's business.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. While working at Videx, Honey starred in his first film as an actor in "Truth or Dare" with actress Paula Meadows. However, the law was soon changed to bring video under the Obscene Publications Act and Freeman's home was raided in 1981 by the OPS, with all the Videx video equipment confiscated in the process. The Videx offices were raided again in 1983 and Freeman was arrested in relation to the film "The Videx Video Show" under Obscene Publications Act and Perverting the course of justice.
Freeman was sentenced to 15 months in the case relating to the first raid in 1981 involving the video "Sex Slave". Honey took over Videx and produced and directed his first film, "Rock 'n' Roll Ransom", for the company which featured his bandmate Ian Mitchell. After serving ten months Freeman was released from prison and set about preparing for the case of the second raid in relation to the video "The Videx Video Show". Freeman was charged under The Obscene Publications Act and Protection of Children Act, as images of children taken at a naturist park were featured. Having called film critic Derek Malcolm as a witness who classed the film as "harmless erotica" and successfully demonstrating that the film was not obscene, Freeman, Honey, Freeman's girlfriend and company secretary Sara Bhaskaran, and silent business partner John Edward Currey were found not guilty under the Obscene Publications Act. However, Freeman was found guilty of perverting the course of justice, despite having already been acquitted of the offence relating to the video, and sentenced to a further 15 months. He was then recalled by the Parole Board for his previous life sentence for murder.
Going it alone and imprisonment
Honey worked as a photographer, under the pseudonym "Brian Wilson", for Escort magazine throughout the 1980s, shooting his partner Linzi Drew who regularly appeared in the magazine. The couple also took the Videx equipment and mailing list to set up their own mail order business. 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. The couple also used other addresses across Surrey, including that of a pet shop, where order forms would be collected.The couple were arrested in February 1990 following a police raid on their home and convicted in 1992 at Guildford Crown Court under the Obscene Publications Act for "publishing obscene material for gain" and "being in possession of obscene material" following a sting operation in which an undercover police officer joined the companies' mailing list and over a period of more than a year bought several videos, which also proved that the operation was "an on-going tax-free profitable business".
Drew was sentenced to four months, which she served at Holloway Prison and Drake Hall, Staffordshire, before being released after serving two months, while Honey was sentenced to nine months, which he served at Brixton Prison before being transferred after five weeks to Send Open Prison, Surrey. Documents seized by the police indicated that they had 400 people on their mailing list who paid £60 per video.
In December 1993 Honey filed for bankruptcy. Following release from prison Honey and Bill Wright were commissioned to work on the first feature-length videos for Berth Milton, Sr.'s Private Media Group, which had only produced magazines before. Honey directed its first seven films with Wright and took on the new pseudonym Steve Perry.
Ben Dover series
Honey started production of a new gonzo-style series in summer 1994 using the stage name Ben Dover. He directed, produced and starred in the series between 1995 and 2002 along with actors including Marino Franchi and Pascal White. In 1995, Drew became pregnant with their son Tyger Drew-Honey and left the pornography industry.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. In 2002 Honey was dropped by VCA, which had been taken over by Hustler, and opted to concentrate on the market in the UK instead. 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. He began producing the Ben Dover's Kick Ass Anal Adventures series, of which there were five instalments.
In 2008 Honey attended the UK Adult Film Awards once more, representing Television X and Red Hot TV along with Linsey Dawn Mckenzie and other British adult film stars. Television X has shown some of his most recent projects such as St/ Teenycums, which won Best Script at the UK Adult Film Awards 2008.
Following the demise of physical DVD sales, Honey diversified the Ben Dover brand by launching branded clothing, sex toys, male enhancers, mugs and stickers as well as Ben Dover approved stag and hen parties. Honey also hosts "Ben Dover Porn Disco"s involving wet t-shirt competitions and "SwingalongaBen" swinging parties in Aston, Birmingham.
Also in 2012, Honey started production on a new online Ben Dover series "Like Father Like Son," an incest-based series where he and his on-screen son have sex with the same girl together. He confirmed the series did not feature his own son.
Outside the porn industry
In addition to his pornographic work, in 2000 Honey featured in the feature film Last Resort, in which he played a low-budget porn producer.In 2001, despite admitting to having failed to vote in the previous election, Honey revealed that he was considering standing as an independent candidate in the next general election as an "Independent Libertarian". 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". In 2009 Honey resurrected his plans to enter politics, with his own party "New Democrats".
In September 2009, Honey was featured on the BBC Four programme Rich Man Poor Man: Ben Dover Straightens Up, where he attempted to search for personal fulfilment in his life and be taken seriously by making a break in mainstream acting. He performed his one-man show Innocent 'Til Proven Filthy at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Honey appeared as Arthur in the comedy film On the Ropes.
In 2012 Honey joined the Guns N' Roses tribute band Guns 2 Roses as a special guest drummer, and continues to tour with them on select dates. He also released the mockumentary "The Only Way is Dover" on YouTube, claiming "It's a bit like Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's not about porn, it's about what we do when we're not doing porn."
In 2016 Honey was cast by film producer Mark Noyce as Rubber John in the comedy film The Blazing Cannons.
In February 2017, Honey revealed that he was battling bladder cancer and is currently undergoing chemotherapy.