On the game

Shirley Conran

Prostitutes Jeremy Sandford (Secker and , Warburg £4.50) With easily the dullest cover of the year concealing the stuff that Raymond's Revue Bar dreams are made of, this curiously unsexy book contains everything the average thirteen year old male ever wanted to know about prostitutes, but couldn't very well verify.

Mr Sandford's quaint, fifth form prose has a surprisingly stilted, slightly old-fashioned flavour and the resulting style is a cross between the News of the World and Pears Cyclopaedia. (F/oivat Eton a.) A typical Passage reads "What sort of people are prostitutes? If the job is physically degrading, is it more so than a coal miner, a dustman or a shopgirl on her feet eight hours a day? If it is Spiritually degrading is it more so than that of an unbelieving parson . . or an advertising Copywriter? ... If we are proud of Britain and its Institutions, should we also be proud of the way that prostitutes are treated in Britain?"

Prostitutes starts as a minor consumer guide ("Do the people who provide sex for sale get a good deal in Britain?") then defines Prostitution and classifies those who practise it (bar girls, street girls, hustlers, high class hostesses, call-girls, sex therapists, conference girls, massage parlour madams and flagella tors). Mr Sandford then tells anyone who doesn't know, why girls sell sex and why men buy it, covers male prostitution in a mere fourteen pages and polishes off the Arab trade ln ten lines (although I would have thought this Was a growth business that many would want to know more about.) He then nips on to further female forms of exploitation like topless go-go, blue movies, stripping, pin-ups, beauty queens and bunny girls. Finally, there's an Interesting alphabetical survey of the prostitution scene in other countries (a sort of Elaedekker?), A for Argentine, B for Belgium, c for Caribbean and so on. Most riveting fact cleaned from this section was that prostitution is officially considered not to exist in Russia, les fines de joie being officially referred to as 'loafers" or "parasites." Some of them get sent to Siberia but Siberian towns have recently been objecting to this.

Mr Sandford is definitely on the side of the Poor, persecuted prostitute, even the parttimer, defined as "the housewife or girl who helps pay the bills at the end of the week with a bit of street-walking. Obviously she can't afford Premises or a telephone. Yet the new legislation (1959 Street Offences Act) makes her part-time Job very difficult." At the same time he seems to he against wives, seeing marriage (as do some Of the whores he knows) as "a sort of long-term Prostitution." He remembers many of the Prostitutes he has met as having "a high degree of charm and intelligence" and some of them speak in the classy third person singular. One, a Miss Buckingham, muses "I'm beginning to think that sexual problems emanate from PsYchic and personality problems . . . that sexual responses are the end product of one's Personality and one's ability to confront life and express oneself." Another, called Vanessa, describes the escort agency as "a means of

giving you social mobility. It's expression and socialism."

When they are not expressing themselves we are told that, "The average prostitute reads. A lot of them read a great deal. They're interested in politics, literature and things like that. . . ." Furthermore, at one London brothel most of the girls do crossword puzzles when they aren't working. Mr Sandford makes it sound like a quiet night at the Athenaeum. "Are these articulate and pleasant girls or their housebound, often boringly married sisters to be envied?" he demands. "They have a skill, a greater skill than their married sisters. Are they really worse off than their sisters in the treadmill of marriage or factory?" Mr Sandford asks many more rhetorical questions about these intelligent and useful women, but his main concern seems to be as follows: Q.1. Is it a.crime to supply the public demand for bought sex and titillation, or is it a public service? A. No and Yes.

Q. 2. Should there be licensed State brothels with ID's and weekly inspections, as in West Germany? A. Yes.

Q. 3. Should prostitutes be available on the National Health? A. Yes.

He suggests that prostitutes should be licensed and regulated "carrying identity cards as in Nevada" and that there should be a professional organisation to represent 'prostitutes. (I suppose a Union would be too obvious a grouping?) He quotes an historical precedent. There were licensed brothels in Britain in the reign of Henry II and regulations for controlling them appeared in the Statute Book in 1161, so there. He also suggests that there be special pubs called Houses of Assignation and licensed 'brothel streets where girls could perhaps be treated thrice daily for VD. Eldorado indeed and, as Mr Sandford points out, a practical one because blackmail would thus be eliminated and visiting politicians could use the brothels without fear of security leaks.

But I hardened my view of Mr Sandford as an unrealistic fellow with a bee in his Y-fronts when he went on to suggest "that local authorities should be allowed to provide prostitutes as a social or welfare service if they deem fit. And that it should also be possible for a psychiatrist to recommend it for a patient, since this could save the tax payer some years of psychiatrist's fees." In fact, whores should

perhaps "be available as sex therapy for the middle-aged, those in hospital and those mentally sick in psychiatric wards." I would have thought that a resident prostitute attached to each psychiatric hospital, as he suggests, might lead straight to a new pay bed controversy but it's certainly an idea for a new Emergency Ward Ten. Mr Sandford then mysteriously adds that "Mobile facilities should be made available." Now what does this mean?

Beds on castors? Tarts on roller skates? Feels on wheels? A whole new section at the Motor Show for scarlet velvet lined caravans and VW conversions, complete with frilly lampshades and bugged teddy bears? Together we slid into fantasy. Anyway, once organised on decent lines of this sort, the pimp, the ponce, the white slaver and the brothel keeper would be eliminated and, "if good conditions of service could be created for both male and female prostitutes, prostitution might attract an excellent type of person."

Alternatively, Mr Sandford suggests that one way of gettinrid of prostitution might be to increase the women's side of the police force in order to have only police women dealing with the girls, rather than males who might be susceptible to sexual bribery. But then, appar

ently, the women police force might attract Lesbians in large numbers, thus increasing the possibility of more corruption in the administration of justice.

In spite of the quiet life led by the girls, at some point Mr Sandford wonders, "Is there a sadness underlying prostitution when all is said? I've found in working on this bodk, that I've been made sad." Me too, me too. I haven't had such a tedious time in bed since one Easter when in the line of duty, I had to plough through five hundred odd (some very odd) pages of the Female Orgasm. At least Mr Sandford's book is shorter.