Gown star gone - Hugh Hefner, man of influence

UNLESS you lived in a society where the monochrome television station began broadcasting at six o’clock and closed at 10.30; where the idea of an active and pleasurable sex life outside of marriage was as remote as grand opera or real coffee, it is hard to imagine how very exotic Hugh Hefner, who died yesterday, aged 91, seemed.

Hefner presented himself as a man committed — and successfully — to satisfying his Herculean sexual appetites. He was also the founder of Playboy.

Dressed semi-permanently in a silk dressing gown and