It emerged today that Helen Wood is going to set to appear on the next series of Big Brother, which begins this evening. Here’s her Spectator Diary from 2011, in which she explains how the daughter of a university lecturer ended up as a call girl.
A few years ago I was offered £450,000 to tell the world that Wayne Rooney had paid to sleep with me, but I didn’t take it. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. Whatever impression Rooney and his sort give, escort girls are usually very discreet. A good reputation is invaluable. In my case, I knew that both my work and my home life would suffer if I kissed and told. My family and friends didn’t know I what I did (although some had suspicions) and if word got out, I would forever be thought of as a prostitute. When the papers started sniffing around, I applied for an injunction myself but guess what? I was rejected. So there’s one law for rich men — however badly they behave — and quite another for the women they sleep with. My name appeared in the tabloids when the story about Rooney broke. In an ideal world, no one would ever have known about my secret working life. But the world, as I’ve known it, is anything but ideal.
How could the daughter of a university lecturer end up selling sex? I get sick of being asked this question. But the truth is that being middle-class does not guarantee a happy childhood. My dad and I had a very volatile relationship and my mum just chose to be away from the house as much as possible. In my early teens, I began to run away from home and at 15 I was placed in foster care with a vicar and his wife. For those months I spent with them, I was happy. I had firm principles; I didn’t believe in sex before marriage. But when I was 16, I was moved by social services to live on my own — and that’s when my ideals went out the window.
I started dating and, by the time I sat my GCSEs, I was pregnant. I don’t believe in abortion so I had my son and took him to nursery while I finished sixth form. I worked as a sales assistant in Next in the evenings to try to make ends meet. My mistake — and God knows I’ve made enough of them — was to get into debt. I wanted to be normal, to live (and spend) like my girlfriends. That was things started really going wrong. I borrowed £800 to go on holiday, followed by £500 to pay the rent — both from loan sharks. The interest increased by the day, the debts got out of control and I soon owed £2,500. By that time I had bailiffs coming to my door and my landlord asking for sex in lieu of rent (I refused) in a house where the windows were being regularly smashed. Having grown up in a good neighbourhood, it was horribly unlike anything I was used to. That was when I heard from a friend about being an escort: you spent an evening with a man, but you didn’t need to have sex, she said. £1,500 an evening, just to listen to a man drone on! It was an easy decision.
It may sound perverse, but I became an escort because I wasn’t interested in men. I’d known enough violent ones in my time to put me off boyfriends and dating. My clients wanted company, with no strings attached. So did I. At the end of the evening, my clients sometimes asked for more but I usually refused them. In fact I was dropped by my agency for saying ‘goodnight’ before midnight too often. Soon afterwards, I added what you might call the full range of escort services — but only to men I liked. I advertised through an online Irish agency, under the category ‘elite English girls’, and went to Dublin twice a month, where no one knew me. I rented a beautiful apartment with a few other girls and made enough each month to begin to save a nest-egg for my son. I’m not exactly proud of my career so far — but the way I see it, I’ve worked hard, and haven’t been a hypocrite. Even now, there are still many secrets I’ve never told.
I’ve had many famous clients, so I was almost offended when an actor slapped an injunction on me. My first thought was outrage that he’d think I’d blab. Word had leaked, perhaps through one of the girls I shared the apartment with, but I was never going to talk. My second thought was: why would anyone want to read about him? This man’s no major celebrity — I hardly recognised him when he walked through the door. I’ve since found out that this actor has given interviews about his perfect family and fidelity. So I have this piece of advice for him: if you’re going to see escort girls, don’t brag about your squeaky-clean private life. You’re pushing your luck.
I’ve given up the escort business now and my plan is to write a book, not just about my life but about the world I briefly occupied. Is being an escort so much worse than being a gold-digger? That means telling someone ‘I love you’ while only seeing pound signs. I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t regret it either. If I can find a publisher, I’d like to give my side of the story at least. That’s if the English law will ever allow women like me a chance to speak.
It was a book, Call Me Elizabeth, that helped me to accept being an escort. It is about a lady who lived in a high-class area of London and lost her job, but didn’t want her kids to have to leave private school. It may sound a bit shallow, but it was an inspiration for me to read something like that. The story about the escort business in Britain needs updating for the 21st century, though. There is now a celebrity cast, by no means all of them actors and footballers. A friend of mine has been seeing a politician in London for some time, and has pictures that would make it very hard for him to deny anything. But this MP can rest easy: she would not sell her story. She values her privacy and anonymity, just as I once did.
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