The first time ever I saw her face -- you have to resort to lyricism when speaking of Roberta Pedon -- a million tiny icicles started using my spine as a skating rink. I could taste colours, and my adrenal gland begged for mercy to the sound of Beethoven's 9th. His Ode to Joy...

She was somewhere near the back of my Dad's Fiesta magazine, between a hack piece on Hitler and a whole page of penis-enlargers. I wasn't even remotely interested in Hitler and I was too young to know if I needed a penis-enlarger. Anyway, Ms Pedon was doing a fine job of penis enlargement all by herself. What I needed was oxygen, privacy, and something soft and absorbent to soak up the mess.

It was 1974, the year Nixon finally admitted in public, what the public had known for years. The year Evel Knievel tried to jump the Grand Canyon strapped to a giant Roman Candle. The year England failed to qualify for the World Cup Finals. Patty Hearst was kidnapped, Labour won the British General Election, Badlands was shown at the cinema, and Genesis released The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

This was the stuff I knew. I thought I knew what the girl who changed my life was called. She was called, Sally because Fiesta said she was... It was over two years before I saw 'Sally' again. My dad had left home to live with his secretary, and had taken Fiesta with him. In July '76 I was 15 -- not old enough to buy adult magazines legally, but just about tall enough to try and purchase them illegally. So, one idyllic Thursday evening, I walked up to a newsstand in the centre of Liverpool and bought a copy of Parliament's Kingsize magazine. Just like that. As easy as blowing the seeds off a sugar-stealer? Well, not exactly. As easy as licking my own weight in frogsperm. As easy as controlling a heart that was playing the drumbeat from Lust for Life when it wasn't using my ribcage as a xylophone. As easy as walking on legs made of boiled linguini. Not easy at all. But the vendor ignored all these accessories of guilt and blandly took my money.

Kingsize was an exotic thing from the USA. A great discovery that equalled anything that came from The Valley of the Kings. A shivering glance at the covergirl confirmed that -- she had the Valley of the Kingsize. It was a cleavage that you could park a family car in. Inside were girls who looked like cartoons. Glorious caricatures of the girls who appeared on Page 3 of The Sun. By the time I'd got through the first three layouts, the air was full of music. Then 'Sally' appeared... I would have recognised her in Kenny's orange snorkel, but all she wore were earrings. One look at those green eyes and that kooky, lop-sided grin was enough to turn my blood to moonshine. But something about Sally had changed -- her name... Now she was Robin. Strange name for a girl, I thought. Maybe it was short for something?

In December of the same year, in the same city, I wandered into the ABC cinema one afternoon to watch a double-bill of films I was still too young to gaze upon. The first film I forget, probably because it was forgettable. The second movie was called Sizzlers. It started with three guys escaping from prison and taking refuge in a school for girls. The cons were clichés drawn with crayon so that drive-in audiences didn't have to think about them for too long. A sneering boss, a wise-cracking black, and a simpering queen. They're not important from now on. About 20 minutes in, a girl wandered into the shot and caused me to make one of those involuntary sounds that are impossible to reproduce for money later on. Somewhere between a sigh, a squeak, and a yell. I made the sound because right there on the screen, about 8' tall and moving in living Technicolor was Robin. My Robin...

At the end of the movie I lingered over the credits and "Roberta Pedon" emerged below the cons and a sometime Russ Meyer starlet called Sharon Kelly. Now, at last, I knew her name. Just why the British distributor changed the name of Delinquent Schoolgirls to Sizzlers is a mystery I have never been able to unravel, incidentally.

Today, thanks to the Internet and the selfless devotion of people like Nicklaus, I can readily identify most of the girls who were the sexual landmarks of my adolescence, but the knowledge came long after those girls quit modelling for good. I'd write some more, but I have to lie down for a while. Too many memories...