Is the government planning to steal the sounds of your orgasm and transform it into a deadly super weapon? This is the bizarre claim made by recording engineer Vernon Diddle when arrested by police last week for illicitly recording the lovemaking noises of an unsuspecting couple in Cobham, Surrey. “The sounds produced by human beings at the moment of sexual climax, when properly mixed and amplified, can be transformed into a beam of pure destructive energy,” thirty one year old Diddle told Woking Magistrates Court at his bail hearing. “By adjusting the power of the beam, it can incapacitate targets by inducing artificial sexual ecstasy through harmonic vibration, or destroy buildings with an erotic shockwave.” Diddle, who was representing himself, claimed that he was part of a top secret government research project to develop the weapon. “Obviously, for security reasons, the authorities will deny any knowledge of myself or the project,” he declared, before being released on bail and referred for a psychiatric assessment. When apprehended by the police, who were responding to reports of a nocturnal prowler, the sound engineer was found lurking in a suburban garden, wearing headphones and holding a boom mike attached to a cassette recorder up to a bedroom window. “The occupants of the room, who were going at it hammer and tongs, so to speak, were completely oblivious to the fact that they were being recorded,” explained Sergeant Bill Knocker. “Needless to say, they were quite shocked when informed that their every moan and groan had been taped by this filthy pervert. It could take years of therapy before they can have sex in anything other than a soundproofed room.” Needless to say, the police are highly sceptical as to Diddle’s claims – arguing that if he really was a research scientist he’d surely have more sophisticated recording equipment – and have an alternative explanation for his behaviour. “Its a little known fact that many porn actresses, although talented physical performers, are completely unable to produce satisfactory vocal performances to match,” explains Knocker. “Consequently, producers and directors are always on the lookout for suitable vocal doubles. Obviously, using the illegally recorded sex screams of ordinary people obviates the need to pay expensive fees to professional performers – it can save them a fortune in royalties.” Indeed, Knocker believes that the arrest of Diddle has uncovered a massive black market in pirated erotic groanings. “We believe that up to sixty percent of current British porn productions utilise these stolen vocals,” he declares. “Hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocent people have been turned into unwitting porn stars!”

The use of these unauthorised sexual vocals has already resulted in several awkward situations. In one recent incident a Wolverhampton man was arrested after kicking in his next door neighbour’s front door and giving the unfortunate man a severe kicking. “He was just settling down to watch Eastenders when he heard the distinctive sound of his girlfriend screaming in ecstasy coming through the wall from the house next door,” explains Sergeant Knocker. “Naturally, he assumed his neighbour was giving her a good seeing to and went round to sort the bastard out. It turned out the poor guy had simply been watching Blow the Man Down, in which the lead actress had been dubbed with the girlfriend’s screams!” According to top adult film historian Lionel Bumstadler, the practice of pirating vocals has a long tradition in the industry. “It goes back to at least the 1930s and legendary stag film producer Irving J Whipper,” he opines. “In the wake of King Kong’s success, Whipper produced a porno cash-in entitled King Dong, featuring an amorous ape on the rampage in Manhattan. For the climactic sequences where the heroine falls for the charms of the heavily-endowed primate on the roof of an apartment block, he found that leading lady Fanny Lincolnshire just wasn’t able to provide the requisite level of decibels. His solution was simply to pirate Fay Wray’s screams from the original King Kong” (Finding Fanny’s lovemaking too demanding, Dong is unable to keep up his erection and, frustrated, leaps from the roof clutching his flaccid member, prompting a passing policeman to comment “It was beauty that killed his beast”). Other horror film screamers such as Evelyn Ankers and Gloria Stuart also found their vocal talents misappropriated for such porno epics as Pootenanny Toot and Of Inhuman Bondage. This practice was finally outlawed by the Screen Actor’s Guild in 1949, and porno producers were forced to find their substitute screamers elsewhere. “That’s when they started making secret illegal recordings of people’s lovemaking to use in their films,” says Bumstadler. “At first they targeted female stars known for their vocal abilities whilst they made love.” Infamously, Whipple succeeded in obtaining a recording of Bette Davis’ amazing screaming whilst she was being juked by Errol Flynn’s notorious bone flute, which he subsequently used on a host of cheap 1950s nudie movies.

For his part, Diddle doesn’t deny having worked in the porn industry as a sound recordist, claiming that this was where he first had the idea for his new weapon. “It was when I was working with Magna Cum Loudly in late 1990s that I began to realise the destructive potential of carnal screaming,” he told the Woking Advertiser following his release on bail. “She had the most amazing voice, she could set off car alarms up to three streets away when she climaxed! I once saw her shatter glass when she did it doggy-style with Johnny Thunderbox in Anal Angel – she even cracked the camera lens!” The challenge for Diddle was to find which type of sex scream would best suit his purposes. Consequently, he spent several years hanging around outside nurses’ homes and girls school dormitories with his microphone, hoping to hear some good screaming. He was arrested at least three times by the police during this period, and had his sound equipment confiscated twice, before deciding to change his approach. “Whenever a friend told me of a noisy female neighbour, I’d rush around there with my equipment”, he recalls. “It was a simpler and safer method of getting the material!” As a result of his efforts, Diddle was able to build up an unparalleled library of sexual vocal effects for his experiments. “There’s no doubt that the sound of a woman reaching orgasm normally is far superior to the type of scream you get when they’re taken up the arse,” he opines. “It has a far greater harmonic range, allowing it produce a broader range of effects when resonated through my equipment. The anal scream is only good for straightforward destruction. Of course, the best effects are achieved through correctly mixing the two.” After several years of experimentation, the sound recordist was able to produce a prototype weapon, which he claims to have successfully demonstrated to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). “I was able to destroy a Scorpion tank at a range of five hundred yards using a mix of climactic groans and screams from a dozen different women,” he declares. “Obviously, they were interested and wanted me to develop it further, but were a bit strapped for cash, what with all their commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Consequently, Diddle has had to come up with a lot of the development funding himself by selling vocal effects from his private library to adult film producers. Needless to say, the MoD has denied all knowledge of Diddle and his experiments.