It should come as no surprise that I’m a pm person, so my day begins in the late morning, around 11. The first thing I do is have breakfast in bed — an English muffin, a little jam, a bit of milk, half a grapefruit — read the newspapers, and turn the television on to the news. I want to know what happened while I was asleep and make sure the world is still here. These days, you have to be sure.

Then I have a shave, take the vitamin pills, clean up, and put on my pyjamas for the day. I wear flannel pyjamas at night, but it’s silk during the day and evening. It’s not a conservative look, but my parents were very conservative, particularly in the sexual area. There wasn’t a lot of hugging and kissing, not an open display of affection. I rebelled to become a Roosevelt democrat when I was a little boy, before I could even vote.

After breakfast I go down and sit with my secretary. Running the magazine today is something of a labour of love.

I go through various notes that I have, and look at whatever’s come in — such as the layouts. I have a brown book dummy for the upcoming issues.

I talk to my various editors, and take care of other kinds of business.

I think I’ve used Playboy in a very obvious way in terms of becoming a personal personification of the playboy. When I was 16 I had this crush on a girl, but she rejected me and that was key. I think all of my life, to some extent, has been making up for that. Having

been rejected I reinvented myself and started referring to myself as Hef instead of Hugh. And I started writing stories and creating comic strips, including a cartoon autobiography of my life.

In retrospect it was obvious that it was an early, teenage rehearsal for what I did when I grew up with Playboy. It was really a matter of creating a world of my own in which I was centre stage, and I passed it around to my friends. I became one of the most popular boys in school; I learnt to jitterbug and was voted the best dancer in the class, was head of the student council, wrote and acted in plays.

Nowadays I spend much of the day seeing the entire magazine come together, though I don’t read every page. I change layouts and still pick the pictorials and the covers, and I edit the party jokes and the letters column.

Plus I pick the Playmates — why would I push that off to somebody else?

I picked the first ever Playmate we photographed — a girl who worked in our office that we named Janet Pilgrim. We told a little story about how she worked at the magazine, and that was the beginning of the concept: it suggested nice, regular girls like sex too. The idea was to create a lifestyle magazine for young urban guys — a magazine that was related to the life I wasn’t living. It was 1953, I was in an unhappy marriage, and I remember standing on a bridge in my native Chicago thinking:

“Is this all my life is going to be?”

In the weeks and months that followed I started making plans and borrowed about $8,000. The magazine was a hit immediately, and profitable in the very first year. The 1950s were such a conservative time — politically, socially, sexually — that a magazine like Playboy was a true revolution, and it was embraced very quickly.

These days we’re still expanding the brand. We just opened a Playboy casino in Las Vegas, but my daughter, Christie, looks after that side of the company. I focus on the magazine, which takes up most of the afternoon, then around five or six I have a light lunch — soup and cheese and crackers. I watch what I eat, but I do like chocolate, so I watch it, sort of.

I like to plan different events for each night of the week, like Monday night is manly night, where I hang out with the guys, old friends, and watch a classic movie in my screening room. Tuesdays I take the girls out to dinner and they pick the restaurant. They pick from the menu, but I have lamb chops and a baked potato sent in from the mansion, so mine is set. The three girls — the last of them, Kendra, joined us about three years ago — and I spend a lot of time together, but most of my free time is spent with Holly.

As I was about to celebrate my 81st birthday, I thought seriously: “My 81st is going to be better than my 21st.” That just seems unreal. I was just someone who wanted to publish a magazine, but I like to think I became somebody who played a part in changing the social and sexual values of his time in a positive way, and had a lot of fun doing it.

I still like the big parties, but I have to admit, not as much as I used to. The best times for me are the quiet times, and the best time of all is, you know… in bed with Holly. Our relationship has become more and more serious, so she’s the one that sleeps with me. Most nights we’re up in bed by 10 or 11, but we watch a movie or something and Holly will usually fall asleep before I do.

I usually turn in around 2am. It’s as close as I’ve come to a soul mate, but I doubt I’ll get married again. I’m not happy about what I see happening in relationships when you get married. Though I suspect Holly’s the one I’ll be spending the rest of my life with.

The Girls of the Playboy Mansion is on Sundays at 10.30pm on E!

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