Would you rather live next door to a Brothel or a Pub?

8:00pm Monday 29th September 2008

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My mother-in-law just asked me "Have you heard the news?". Not knowing what she meant I said "What news?" She then told me that the police have recently raided two brothels in Mill Hill. It appears that I walk past both of them most days (not that I'd noticed). I'm not surprised though. When I left school I worked in a brothel for 6 weeks. Before you ask, I was working there as a painter and decorator and I was paid in cash, not kind !!! Let me tell you a little bit about what I learned.

Having finished my A-Levels I needed to raise some cash. I placed an advert in one of our local newsagent windows "Experienced decorator, clean worker and not too expensive" with our phone number. A couple of days later a lady called and asked if I could come around and price up a job. "No problem". As I made my way up the drive, I thought "Nice House". When I knocked, a rather attractive mid 50's lady answered. I said "Hi, I'm the decorator, come to give you an estimate". She gave me a funny look and said "Oh, you're younger than I thought". I explained I'd done a painting and decorating course at school and had worked with some of Barnet's finest decorators. I told her I'd decided to start out on my own. I was shown around a nice 5 bedroom detached house and told that all of the bedrooms, toilets, kitchen and hallway needed a good lick of paint.

No problem, it wasn't in bad condition and was clean and tidy. I gave a quick estimate and the lady replied. "Look, I won't beat about the bush. In this establishment we require a certain amount of discretion. I'll pay you an extra tenner a day and you say nothing to anyone about what we do here." Not being quite as worldly then, I hadn't twigged, but in 1981 an extra tenner was a lot of money. Anyway I assured her that I was the soul of discretion and would start on Monday.

When you decorate a property, you generally start in the upstairs bedrooms and work down, so it took a while for the truth to fully dawn on me. I was locked away in the unused room and I'd put on my cassette player with the Ramones (at a discrete volume) and I'd work. I never paid too much attention to what was going on.

After about the third day, the lady of the house brought me a cup of tea and said "I was a bit worried about you, but you're alright". Thinking she thought my taste in music had given her the wrong idea, I replied "You know just because people like Punk rock doesn't mean we're dodgy". She laughed and said "No, about working here. You just get on with it." All of a sudden the penny dropped. Not wishing to appear like a plonker I said "A job's a job, so long as I get paid I don't mind". She laughed and said "Oh, you'll fit right in".

As the weeks progressed, I got to know everyone a bit better. I had many interesting chats over cups of tea. The first thing that surprised me was that the Lady of the house ran it purely as a business venture. The property had been selected for it's discreet location. It had a long drive, trees to shield it from nosy neighbours and was set on a busy road, so cars would be travelling quite quickly past it (harder to stop and snoop). She'd checked out the neighbours beforehand, on some pretext and ascertained that they were unlikely to pay much attention so long as a degree of discretion was observed.

What was more interesting were the girls who worked there. She told me once "No one works in this game because their life has worked out how they wanted it to". It soon became clear to me that all of the women considered themselves to be lucky to be working at this particular institution. The rules of the house were fair and the environment was pleasant. Once I'd become part of the furniture, some of the conversations were truly shocking for me. I didn't know much about the personal circumstances of any of the girls, but the one thing that became clear is that they purely considered what they did to be work. Some of the punters they liked, some they didn't and most they didn't care about.

As for the punters. Most of them seemed quite normal. A couple would acknowledge me as I painted the hallway, most were in and out as quickly as possible. The only one I can remember talking to was a disabled guy. I had a cup of tea with his brother, who used to bring him once a month for a treat. The brother told me that it was the only thing which kept him sane. He had a cup of tea and a biscuit afterwards, I said "You look happier now". He replied "Yeah it was great, really great". When he left, the girl said to me "Breaks your heart, he's such a nice guy, gives a nice tip".

At the end of my stint I got a £20 bonus for doing a good job. I got a couple of other jobs from the customers ("Don't tell the wife" was the main condition). One thing that had changed was my opinion of the sex industry. I now firmly believe that brothels should be legal and regulated.

The current system drives the whole business underground, which is why we have the human slavery, the mistreatment and the people trafficking. This will always be the case until men go off sex. Now I don't make use of them myself, but many people do. That is why it is better for punters, workers, neighbours and society in general for them to be as well run as possible. I'd make any prospective establishment put down a £100,000 public order bond and if they created problems, then they'd lose their license and their bond.

The only argument against licensing that I've heard is that it will upset neighbours. Now if you go down Mill Hill Broadway at pub chucking out time, you see more anti-social behaviour than I saw in 6 weeks, probably than I would have seen in 6 years. At the brothel, people turned up, did what they had to do and went. If anyone misbehaved, they got banned. That was that. Maybe the ideal place to start would be on the site of some of the rowdier pubs in Barnet, to give the neighbours a break.