Please Let It Stop (8 page)

She is unbelievably protective of me and will drop anything if I need her. Although I now live about fifteen minutes from her, she used to live exactly one mile away,
door to door, close enough for me to call on her when I needed her help. She has often been called late at night to deal with a gigantic spider that had broken through the window, run up my stairs and placed itself in an aggressive manner near my bed. She would arrive to find me standing frozen with fear on the bed, waiting for her to wrestle with the spider and save me.

CHAPTER FIVE

Not too many businesses can justify having a troupe of dancers, but we can. One of the joys of a company like Ann Summers is that there are so many opportunities for innovative marketing. The idea of having a Roadshow originated in 1987 when one of our party organisers created a fashion show with a few girls and guys she knew. Wearing Ann Summers outfits, they danced in nightclubs while she canvassed both party bookings and recruits. One night some of my area managers invited me along to one of these shows, in Uxbridge, Middlesex. While the dancers were all pretty sexy, one of the male dancers caught my eye – he was just gorgeous with an amazing body. His name was Ben. He was twenty-four, four years my junior and once we got talking I found out he was confident and intelligent, which just made him even more attractive. In all, he was quite a package and I really fancied him.

By 1988 the dancers had been reinvented as the Ann Summers Xperience and were playing to delighted audiences abroad as well as in Britain. Working on the premise that you can never have too much of a good thing, we launched another dance group, Xcalibur, five years later which Ben would eventually join. While Xperience had both girls and guys who danced raunchily, Xcalibur was an all-male group, more along the lines of the Chippendales. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to find five men who looked delicious, could dance and were happy removing their clothes. Never being one to shirk a challenge, I searched high and low, initially seeking out an existing dance group with a view to training them. That didn’t work so we were at a bit of a loss, when Vanessa and I had a chance meeting with a blond Adonis called Steve Golding. Of all the places in the world, we found him in a wine bar in Croydon! He had modelled but was finding times a bit lean and was definitely open to new things. A meeting was set and that was how, one very pleasant day, Steve turned up at our offices with four tanned, trim and gorgeous men. Now all we had to do was turn them into a hot and disciplined dance troupe. It took a bit of work but they became a huge success – it’s amazing the effect a group of men in G-strings can have on an audience of women. Unfortunately, the women can get a bit overexcited, with some of the dancers suffering scratches and bruising, as well as having their underwear torn off in the heat of the moment.

Tony and I were still in the throes of separation when I met Ben so for a while things were just kept simmering at friendship level, but there was no doubt we were both very interested. I went to watch more shows, which meant we began to see each other more often, until a few months later in 1988 we began a relationship. It was Ben who made the first move, something which appeals to a certain old-fashioned side of me. He was an electrician by day and a dancer by night and we got on very well, even though his lifestyle was very different to mine. We became inseparable very quickly – within the limits of my work schedule and his shows! We went out a lot to nightclubs and parties; we went on holidays and we led a very busy social life. It was a complete contrast to my previous relationships.

Ben represented a new, expansive phase in my life. When he came along it was as if he’d tapped into something that was already in me: a desire to get out there and discover the world, to meet new people and open my mind to new experiences. I was already going places as a young businesswoman and now I wanted to do the same in my personal life. When we were together it was always fun and incredibly exciting. So was the sex: when we first met we were having sex up to six times a day. I hadn’t had anything like that and I soon discovered why. Apparently before he met me he’d been taking steroids to give him the body he wanted. But they had also impaired his sex drive. By the time we got together he’d started taking testosterone to
counteract their effect. He went through a transition phase while the testosterone was working and eventually his body found what I suppose was its natural level. But even when things cooled down and we weren’t having sex six times a day, it was still pretty frequent and it was wonderful.

Like Tony, Ben was ambitious. He’d mentioned a few times that he didn’t want to be an electrician all his life. So when I casually suggested that he’d make a great salesman, he jumped at the idea and almost immediately began to look for a sales position. Initially, the recruitment agencies weren’t interested in him because of his lack of experience, but then one came back with a job offer which would be based in the City. Ben was really excited and applied. We were about to go to Tenerife for a week’s holiday so the agency made an interview appointment for his return. He was absolutely overflowing with confidence and was sure the job was his. When we got back from holiday things had changed, and the position had been taken while he was away. Poor Ben! He had bought a new suit especially and had mentally prepared himself. I didn’t know what to say. On the day of the interview he suddenly went and put his suit on, saying he was going to go to it anyway, and would pretend he was unaware the job had now been taken. He duly went off and was seen. They asked him loads of questions, gave him the usual psychometric tests and he got the job. That was typical of Ben’s attitude and it was hard not to admire him,
particularly as he had a mortgage and he was taking a risk stepping outside his comfort zone.

I really respect people who take calculated risks, whether it’s personally or in business. How many people are out there now thinking they want to change their jobs, move to the country or go back to study but haven’t got the courage and determination to do it? It’s very easy to talk about an idea – anyone can do that – but just having it does not make you clever. The people who have the guts to act on their ideas win my admiration. You generally won’t find them saying things like, ‘I’ll do it in a couple of years, I haven’t got the money now or it’s not the right time.’ The truth is that there is hardly ever a ‘right time’ – it’s up to you to decide that the time is right for you. If you find yourself in a situation where you’re worrying what will happen if you do take a particular course of action, why not ask yourself instead, ‘What will happen if I don’t?’ The alternative is to end up being one of those people who thought about it but never did it.

Ben took to his new life in sales like a duck to water, working in the City for a year before he was transferred to Reigate. Though he was also still dancing with Xperience by night, we nevertheless managed to have a fantastic relationship with a surprisingly good social life. I often think the more you do, the more you can fit in and that was
certainly the case with us. We worked hard and played hard. The fact that he was also one of our dancers didn’t cause him any problem, partly I think because he wasn’t directly responsible to me and partly because, unlike Tony, he seemed not to suffer any insecurities associated with my success. I found that refreshing because I could just go ahead and be me.

The dancers are a big attraction at our Annual Conference, which they usually open. In 1992 one of my staff suggested that it would have even more impact if the Managing Director were to join the act and that is how I came to find myself in a dance studio in Fulham getting hot and sweaty with a group of hunky men, including my boyfriend. You have to remember I was still a fairly reserved person back then who was concentrating on running a business, so this was very out of character. We took it extremely seriously and practised for months beforehand. It felt like I was preparing for the TV series
Faking It
, where they take people from one occupation and teach them a totally different one. Ben was brilliant about it all and very comfortable with the idea. The rest of the troupe were somewhat bemused at having their normally groomed and suited boss cavorting about with them and I was terrified of making a fool of myself. However, on the day of the performance, once the music started I suddenly just clicked into the routine and when the audience began applauding me, it just made me want to go for it. Situations in which executives step outside
their usual role and try and be ‘one of the people’ can often be seen as gimmicky. Sometimes it can even backfire on them, leaving them looking silly. In this case, it worked brilliantly because it was totally appropriate to the culture of our business and completely unexpected.

I may have been in charge of a thriving company but I was still naïve about life in so many respects. It was at least a few years after meeting Ben that I realised he was doing drugs. I had never encountered the drug culture – I didn’t even smoke cigarettes – so being with someone to whom it became a daily ritual was a major shock. I didn’t initially understand how Ben could be a great salesman by day (he was very good) and dance at night. Now I know he was doing speed. Later on it became cocaine and then all sorts of other things. However, at the time I was in love with him and, even if I had known from the beginning, I suspect that I would have accepted it as I am not a judgemental person. I would equally have been naïve enough to not realise the negative impact it would later have on our relationship.

I’m pretty convinced that initially he was doing drugs purely as a social thing. He never pressured me to take anything, but several years after we met I found out that in the first week of dating each other he’d spiked my drink with speed. He’d taken me to a nightclub in Uxbridge called Queens and put the stuff in my drink while I was in the toilets. I don’t know whether he thought it was amusing
or if he felt that I was more likely to be on his wavelength if I was also on his drugs. Apparently I came back from the toilet and commented how fizzy my Coke was.

I am somebody who will try things once and as the relationship progressed, I did knowingly try speed. Rather than it being a whimsical decision or one taken under the influence of alcohol, it was actually quite measured. I simply wanted to see what it was like to be in his world. I didn’t try much: it did little for me and I hated the way I felt the next morning. I thought it was hugely overrated but then I am someone who gets very tipsy on just two glasses of wine! In later years he often took ecstasy, Viagra, cocaine and a sleeping pill in the same night. He called it his toolkit and often commented that if he took it in the wrong order he would wake up on the dance floor with a hard on! It was actually to happen at a place called Joe Bananas, after we’d finally split up. I heard he’d taken the sleeping pill instead of the ecstasy tablet and passed out on the dance floor. By this point he was edging towards seventeen stone and his unfortunate friends had to lift this dead weight up the staircase.

The drugs didn’t affect things too much in those early years (well, not that I could tell) and we had the most wonderful time together. I felt like I’d been set free and bit by bit I was becoming less shy and much more comfortable in my own skin. In January 1993, Dominic O’Shea who photographed our catalogue and was a good friend of Vanessa’s,
offered to shoot a private photo session for Vanessa and me. The idea was that we’d have sexy pictures taken for our boyfriends. Dominic was an excellent photographer and very patient with us, showing us how to pose. He had to instruct me far more than Vanessa. She had done some modelling of Ann Summers lingerie, but I wasn’t used to being photographed with very little on (some of the photographs were semi-naked); however, I overcame my initial shyness and enjoyed the session very much. We were really pleased with the results and our boyfriends were absolutely delighted. Several months later Dominic had an accident on his motorbike and was rushed into hospital. It was pretty bad and he was unable to work for quite a while so he went away to convalesce – I was told it was Cuba – and we didn’t hear from him until a few years later.

By 1994 things with Ben were not going so well. Increasingly I was being excluded from his after-hours existence, which was populated by dancers and others who kept equally strange hours. I had no desire to have drugs as part of my world, socially or otherwise, but they were beginning to dominate his and were definitely integral to his social life. Whether I liked it or not, they were becoming part of
my
life. I suppose I should have seen the warning signs then but we never do, do we? It’s amazing what we will overlook when we are in love. Ben’s entire personality was definitely addictive and he had a tendency to do everything to excess. When I first met him, he was a trim, taut, twelve stone in
weight. When we finally split, almost ten years later, he had ballooned to seventeen stone. From being a healthy guy who preferred chicken and salad, he became someone who would raid the fridge at night for chocolate and biscuits. He also drank twice as fast as everyone else. This coincided with him taking steroids again which meant he became quite aggressive. I’ll never forget going into the bathroom one time and putting my arms around him. He pushed me away and I was really shocked. It was one of those symbolic moments in a relationship that you don’t forget. We had always been open and communicative so I asked him what was going on. He said, ‘If you want me to have a body like this I have to take steroids which make me aggressive, so tough!’ In other words, there was to be no discussion. My lovely, charming man was turning into something I didn’t understand.

By now he was often coming in at around ten in the morning. Other women might have suspected an affair, but I didn’t. I’ll admit I was a bit too trusting then. It wasn’t that I refused to see what was happening – I will always face up to reality – I was just too inexperienced to recognise the signs. He’d been less attentive, less interested in sharing things with me, showing me no affection and generally not treating me as well as I’d come to expect from him. I wasn’t happy but I put it down to his work and too much social-ising. Feeling neglected and in need of some recreation, I went out with Vanessa to a nightclub. There was a guy there who paid me a lot of attention. His name was Paul
and he was one of those men who had the knack of making a woman feel instantly special. Guys like him know how to use everything they’ve got to seduce you and that’s exactly what he did. He wasn’t a high achiever. He was nice looking but not as handsome as Tony or as gorgeous as Ben. He was, however, a very sexual, sensual person and I was extremely attracted to him! I was getting absolutely nothing from Ben at the time so I lapped it all up.