London

You could call me a madam because I run three Soho flats, but when I’m with a girl I’m just a maid. One working girl, one maid, one flat, that’s legal. Two working girls constitutes a brothel. The maid’s job is to make sure everything’s clean and that the girl’s got whatever she needs: food, cigarettes, coffee. And we answer the door. The only skill you need in this business is instinct. You have to know if a customer’s alright, if he’s high or looks like trouble. We have regulars, but when customers come in off the street it’s a judgement call. I take one look at them and either say ‘hello, darling’ or ‘busy’. Feature continues

I’ve called the police a few times but I’ve only had to go in three times myself, and I’ve been in this business 30 years. Once I got the oven cleaner out. This man was wanking in my kitchen and I told him put it away, but he carried on. So I got the Mr Muscle and I sprayed it. He was a business man in his suit; imagine him taking that home to his wife.

One time this city banker got a knife out on a girl. He was off his head, obviously been doing coke, and he couldn’t finish. I went in and said ‘darling, I can see white powder round your nose, that’s why you can’t finish, don’t blame her.’ He said ‘I’m gonna wait for you,’ and I said ‘you’ve got a long night then. I’m not scared of you,’ and I threw him out the door. I’m not scared of them. Men are pretty vulnerable when they’re naked. Not a lot scares me these days. And not a lot surprises me either.

People come out with such a lot of crap about this business, that the girls are forced to work and are on drugs. It’s bullshit. Nobody works for me that doesn’t want to work. My girls can take home £600 a day. When I was a working girl I didn’t step out the door for less than £4,000 a day, but I was lucky, I found myself a rich one. I used to see the Kuwaiti ambassador. Most of my girls come from Eastern Europe, and they save up their money and send it home to buy a house.

There is a problem, which is girls who are trafficked, but [that is seen] very rarely in Soho. Those girls mostly come through Albania and end up in saunas. They have no visas or are brought in illegally and the guys tell them there’s nothing they can do, can’t go to the police, can’t get out. But they soon learn. After about six months they figure out that the police are after the guys, not them, and that they don’t need pimps to make their money, so they come to us and we call the police for them. Eighteen months ago there was a big heist and they took four pimps in.