He grew up playing Jake, the sensible, baby-faced son of Pete and Sue Brockman in Outnumbered, but following the end of the comedy series Tyger Drew-Honey is embarking on a whole new challenge, as he launches a documentary series – with the first one examining the porn industry.
The 18-year-old will look at a number of issues in Tyger Takes On…, beginning with porn, an industry he knows much about, having grown up with two parents who worked in the adult entertainment business: glamour model and editor of porn magazine Penthouse, Linzi Drew, and producer and performer Simon James Honey, also known as ‘Ben Dover’.
“It was never like my parents sat me down one day and told me about the porn industry and that they were part of it,” Tyger explained on This Morning today of his upbringing.
“As I was growing up it was very euphemistically explained to me over the years, and as I grew older and got slightly more understanding of the world I gained more of an understanding of their job and that aspect of their life. It was never hidden from me.”
The young actor added: “We didn’t go and hang signs on the neighbours’ mailboxes but if anyone did enquire in any in any sense there was never an element of them trying to hide it.”
The documentary will focus very much on how the porn industry has changed over the years, with Tyger explaining: “It’s about the way that porn on the internet has changed and how nowadays it’s easier to find it than it is to avoid it, and it has completely changed we way we can access it.
“Now we have really young kids watching it before having sufficient sex education, and it really can impact on their lives and views about sex.”
He continued: “What it is doing is trying to address everyone. A lot of people of my generation are directly affected by it, but also everyone [else]. What we need to do is talk about sex more, not to categorise porn so quickly as a good thing or a bad thing, but appreciate it is more complicated than that. Be more open about it and have less stigma and talk about what we like and don’t like.
“I think it can be used in the right way and can be quite harmless but at the same time there is so much variety out there. We can watching any video we want in an instant, and I think because there is so much out there we’re getting the taste for more [extreme stuff].”
As part of this documentary, Tyger met those who had been affected after becoming ‘addicted’ to porn, including one young woman who became involved in an unhealthy relationship as a result.
“I met a girl who had very bad relationship purely because her boyfriend got hooked on dangerous stuff,” Tyger explained.
“She started going out with this guy at school and they used to watch porn together, it became a big part of their lives, and gradually he got addicted and got into darker and darker types of porn.
“Ultimately he was watching rape porn say five or six times a day and because he was watching it so much that became his perception of what sex was. He couldn’t arouse himself or feel sexual excitement less unless it was in those kind of circumstances.
“Over time his girlfriend started to feel that was what normal sex was. These are two young adults going into the world thinking making love is actually an act of violence.
“That story did shock me. It opened my eyes to quite how harmful it can be and also the dark types of porn out there.”
Find out what else Tyger had to say about the porn industry and his findings about it in the video above.
If you have been affected by any of the issues concerned on This Morning, check out the helplines.
Tyger Takes On… Porn is on BBC3 on Thursday May 15 at 9pm, followed by two other documentary shows in which Tyger examines internet dating and body image.
Porn In The Valley 