As members might expect I had go at it. In short it was a disaster.
I paste the relevant extract from my book for members' edification and entertainment!
‘If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em’ is an old adage that I once attempted to employ with regard to paid sex. After splashing thousands of pounds on punting I decided it was time I actually started to make something out of it by establishing my own escort agency. I can’t recall exactly when this was, either I didn’t keep a detail of it, or very likely it was in the summer of ’99, the ‘lost’ months during which so much seemed to happen.
I do know it was during the summer months as I thought that I would have more time to service the dozens of customers my excellent agency was sure to attract. I would undercut all competitors with my keen prices - £80 an hour (thirty for me, fifty for the lady) - and my beautiful girls. Of course with the cold reality of hindsight the holiday season is perhaps the worst time to begin such a venture, but I thought little of that: I had my car, I had my mobile, I had the experience of knowing what punters wanted, three fifths of all that was required to become a perfect pimp. Now all I needed were the beautiful girls and the slavering clients, both of whom would soon be queuing up to help me make my fortune.
I can’t remember what I called my agency; Greek mythological names were always popular for some reason, so Aphrodite’s and Ariadne’s were two a penny with the odd Roman nod such as Venus’s occasionally thrown in. Whatever it was named my advert was soon displayed for all to see in the Sheffield Star, which at the time was still the main source of escort and massage ads. Who needed one of those new-fangled and complicated web sites which would never take off? A mobile and a motor were all that the successful agency owner required. I’d paid my not insubstantial advertising fee and ‘Ambitious new escort agency seeks attractive staff,’ was boldly displayed every day for a couple of weeks. All I had to do was sit back, wait for the telephone to trill and the cash to come crashing in.
The telephone did indeed trill, unfortunately not as often as I would have liked and not with attractive young ladies, but with a number of guys evidently believing themselves to be potential studs. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told them, ‘I’m only looking for females.’
‘Why didn’t you say that then?’ they invariably peevishly asked.
Back I went to the Star. ‘Can you alter the ads from now on to females only?’
‘Afraid not sir, the sex discrimination act, you know.’
‘But you have other escorts adverts seeking women only.’
At that point I was bamboozled with some balderdash about having to fill in a form which I believe involved some added costs, why this would then allow me to circumvent the sex discrimination act I never found out. The adverts had already cost me quite a few quid more than I was expecting so I decided to stick with them. Occasionally, for every two or three men, I would get the odd female enquiry.
‘What does the escorting involve?’
‘Meeting people.’
‘Do you go out with them?’
‘You can do.’
‘Is that all it involves?’
‘Not if you want to make some decent money, but after I’ve made your introductions what happens is between you and the client and none of my business.’ I knew the perfect pimping patter to avoid getting my collar felt in the same way as the Angels Agency had several years before.
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise,’ would come the inevitable response. And they would invariably hang up.
I was astounded to discover how many apparently naïve ladies there seemed to be locally, who claimed not to realise that ‘escort’ was a modern euphemism for prostitute.
During the couple of weeks or however long it was that the adverts ran I actually managed to ‘interview’ two women. As I travelled to the first interview, I thought one of the essential criteria for their securing employment was would I want to shag her myself? When I heard the cultivated tones of the first filly I couldn’t wait to cast eyes on this silky sounding creature whose received pronunciation suggested she wouldn’t be misplaced at Henley, Glyndebourne or Royal Ascot, never mind the suburbs of Sheffield and its environs. However when she hove into view I thought she would be better suited to a convention of BBW’s, such was her substantial size, an ocean away from the svelte and succulent harem of lovelies I was seeking to employ. We had a chat over a coffee, both I think realising that not only was I not going to employ her, but I would also be disappointed if I were the client and she had materialised at my door. Before we parted she asked if I would be kind enough to give her a lift to a local parlour where she had previously been employed and was hoping to work once more. As I dropped her off at the parlour I thought, despite her refined accent, a BBW ex parlour girl was not exactly the kind of image I was hoping my upmarket agency to portray. However as I bid her farewell I was beginning to accept another old adage which all agencies (and indeed parlours), who were permanently it seems seeking staff, always appeared to adhere to, namely ‘beggars can’t be choosers.’
The second interview fared little better, although this time the lady was more shapely and alluring she arrived with her bloody husband in tow, who suggested she wouldn’t be allowed to sell herself unless he could also ply his trade as an escort. Needless to say as I’d already rejected numerous men I wasn’t about to agree to this. To compound the problem it transpired they were from Barnsley and didn’t have their own transport. Whilst I was prepared to travel anywhere in Sheffield to pick my staff up and take them to wherever it was they were summoned to go, I hadn’t reckoned on roaming as far as the ex-capital of the coalmining industry, to transport them to and from a job say in the south of the region. A few such ventures would soon punch a huge hole in my meagre profits.
As a couple of ironic codas to this sorry enterprise it may also interest the reader to know that in all this time I received the grand total of one enquiry from a potential client. This was left in the form of an answerphone message from an angry and inebriated gent, who suggested that it was a ‘fucking useless agency’ who kept their phone switched off. As you may imagine I was desperately sorry to have missed his business.
To drive the final nail into the coffin of my agency as it was embarrassingly lowered into the ground, the Star phoned me after the advert had expired enquiring if I wished to renew. They may have been mustard keen to secure the business of pimps back then, but a few years down the line and all such advertising would be banished from the sanctified columns of their small ads. However by then it would matter not as the internet would be king, and I would remain an impoverished punter rather than a rich pimp.
