‘How did you get into this?’ 

That’s the question I was asked most often during my time working in strip clubs. 

Other popular queries included: ‘How does your boyfriend/mother feel about you being a stripper?’, ‘Do you do extras?’, and ‘How do you cope in those heels all night?’

The problem with being asked how I got into stripping was the implication there was something wrong with my career choice – I resented being asked. 

Usually I would change the subject or, when pushed, tell them how naughtiness was innate in me, that the word ‘whore’ ran right through my spine, like Blackpool through a stick of rock.

But my job as a stripper began the way most jobs did in 1995: I answered a newspaper advertisement. It said: ‘Dancers wanted. You will earn up to £600 a night. No experience necessary.’

There are limits, after all, to what a working-class girl can do to earn proper money, more now than then, whatever they tell you at school. 

So when I saw that ad, that was it. I liked dancing, I loved money, and I’d no experience of anything at all, so it seemed perfect.

Now, I wasn’t a total idiot. I was reasonably confident that earning £600 would involve more than a few high kicks on a sparkly stage. But – well – why not? I’d just taken a year out from Oxford university after completing my first year, having gone slightly mad – not uncommon among Oxford undergrads.

Letting a girl like me from an Essex comp go to Oxbridge was like putting a pig into a Miss World contest – whether it’s meant as a kind gesture or a practical joke, it’s not going to end well for the pig.

I was shy. I’m still shy, but at 18, faced with tutorials where I had to argue against eloquent 70-year-old professors, I crumbled. It’s not enough to be clever. I needed the polish and confidence that comes with breeding.

I felt I had nothing to lose. I didn’t know who I was anymore, or what I wanted. My whole life plan had gone to blazes. What should I have done?

I turned up for my audition the day after seeing the ad in leggings, jazz shoes and a leotard. I quickly realised my mistake when I saw the other girls in heels, corsets and mini-skirts. But I wasn’t going to back out now, having spent all day working myself into a nervous frenzy. 

Anyway, the other girls were sweethearts – three students, an Aussie backpacker, and a woman in her thirties, who hoped to revive her florist shop with a cash injection. We bonded over being prepared to sell viewing rights to our bits to fund our studies, businesses, children, travel. We were the dross, we had nowhere left to fall, nothing to prove. 

When Oscar, the owner, showed up, we were told to walk out onto the stage from the wings, remove our tops, and then walk off again. This would, presumably, allow Oscar to gauge our capacity for embarrassment, our stage presence, along with our tits. 

I loved walking out on that stage. I felt powerful, delirious with excitement, knowing all eyes were on me. But I also knew I hadn’t a hope of being accepted, after struggling for some minutes with my leotard to produce a pair of rather pendulous, disappointing knockers. 

I knew I hadn’t got the job. I knew he didn’t want me. And I knew, having had a taste of this life – wine, sequins, stages, girls with a cracking line in conversation and nothing at all to lose – that I wanted it all for myself. I knew it like I’ve never known anything before or since. This was where I belonged. 

So many people waste years trying to figure out what they are and where they belong. I was super lucky to get it sorted before I turned 20. 

Happily, auditions are nightly, the turnover of dancers so large, and men’s appetite for new girls so insatiable. So the next night, I went back to the bar in heels and push-up bra, and gave a good wiggle, right in Oscar’s face.

Somehow I oozed confidence. Something about being on stage, having eyes upon me, made that happen. I can’t explain it. But it was true then and remains so. 

That time, I got the job.

I was a stripper for 12 years. After the Windmill, I went to the Sunset Strip Theatre for a couple of years, then started doing the pub circuit – the 50p in a pint glass routine – before getting into strippergrams.

I had a baby at 24, and strippergrams are perfect for mums – you can make £70 in 10 minutes, often leaving baby behind the bar while you get busy, if you’ve an obliging landlord. You hope he won’t wake, start crying and that you don’t start lactating in punters’ faces.

At 30, I decided I was too old to strip, and got into porn and domination. I’d always dabbled in porn, but turning 30 made me start pursuing opportunities more doggedly.

Porn is a job for life, particularly spanking porn, which is my speciality.

I met women in detached houses, shiny new Range Rovers on the drive, their children at boarding school, who were offering one-to-one domination sessions, and thought – I bet I can do that. And I could.

You need imagination, brains and empathy, and all these I possess: it’s a job that makes good use of all my skills. I absolutely adore it, and will continue as long as I’m physically capable of wielding a cane. Plenty of women continue into their 80s and beyond, and make more money than I do.

In the 26 years I’ve been working, society has become a good deal more prudish and puritanical. We live in a world that’s pro-sexuality, but profoundly anti-sex; you’re free to identify as anything you please, but depictions of sexuality are now seen as corrupting and shameful.

There are constant efforts to make it more difficult to access porn; politicians howl and protest at the notion that student sex workers should be supported. I was a newsreader on local radio, but when I published my book and started talking about these issues, I was suspended – despite managing perfectly well to be a first-rate newsreader and dominatrix for two years.

A little bit of acceptance would make a huge difference to sex workers’ lives.

Covid-19 saw me move a lot more of my work online, like everyone else. Distance discipline, via Zoom, setting tasks, encouraging self-spanking; I’ve also started putting a lot more time and effort into OnlyFans, which I love.

It’s a chance to be creative, dress up and play with my friends, and get paid for it! Increasingly, I’m being offered opportunities to work abroad, both for sessions and for filming, which is really exciting.

I have a lot of female clients now. That’s a new phenomenon. I’m quite active on Twitter, so they see other women coming to visit me, which helps them find the courage to come to me themselves for a spanking. Probably 10% of my clientele are female. That always surprises people.

Moreover, about 90% of the film directors I work for are female. The people making the most interesting and successful kink films currently seem to be women. 

I’m asked frequently about ‘exploitation’ in the sex industry and never know how to answer. What exploitation, for heaven’s sake? I’m well-paid and worshipped for doing something I love. How many of us can claim that?

In my 26 years, while I’ve met plenty of girls who didn’t love the work as much as me, I’ve met none I’d describe as exploited. And I’ve met thousands.

In the future, I shall keep whacking and making films, but also I’d love to write more. In particular I’d love to debunk some of the myths and stereotypes around sex work.

I’m aware I’m in a very privileged position, in that I can show my face and talk openly about my career, and I feel I ought to make use of it. Secrecy breeds shame and stigma. Time to fight back.

You can buy Melissa Todd’s book, My Body My Business, on Amazon here or in all good bookstores.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]. 

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