Hugh Hefner was the king of soft porn – and luxury living

I got to know Hugh Hefner quite well when I lived in LA in the nineties and was a fairly regular visitor to the Playboy Mansion. As the Times of London’s Hollywood Correspondent, I was a regular on the guest list for The Playmate of the Year awards and occasionally was asked over for one of his supper evenings in his private cinema – with drinks served by waitress-style bunnies. During one Playmate of the Year awards in 1992, I wrote a piece for The Spectator about covering the LA riots from his study as the city went up in flames.

Hefner’s life philosophy was that ‘Life is too short to live somebody’s else dream’. But reading through the early obits, people think that Hefner was just talking about his liberal attitudes to sex and turning the Bachelor Lifestyle into an art form… but he wasn’t. He was also referring to his philosophy about the ‘service lifestyle’ he pioneered at the Playboy Mansion.