For decades, Melissa Todd has been humiliating politicians and beating up actors... and they've paid her for the privilege.
As a dominatrix, it's her job to turn her clients' weirdest and wildest fantasies into a reality.
She's now given us a peek behind the curtain on what gets them off and why she'll never have sex with them.
Speaking to LADbible, Melissa said she is happily married and 'really loves' her job as a sex worker.
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“I spank people with a cane and tell them they’ve been naughty,” she said.
“Usually, I work out of my house. So as soon as my son left home, I turned his bedroom into a spanking playroom,” said the 49-year-old from Kent.
“So it’s got a school desk in it and a little sofa. I can spank people over the knee there.”
But her services - and clients - are far more varied than you'd think.
Melissa's career in the sex industry began while she was studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford 'with Liz Truss'.
“I was reading PPE at Oxford, had a breakdown, took a year out, and saw an ad in the Evening Standard saying, 'Dancers wanted. You will make £600 a night. No experience necessary',” she recalled.
“Well, I liked dancing, I loved money, and I had no experience of anything whatsoever, so that sounded just perfect.”
30 years on, she doesn't regret a thing.
High-profile clients
While Melissa says her usual clientele 'tend to be very middle class, middle management, white, mid fifties, well-healed and married', she also adheres to the needs of politicians, TV and film stars.
“I wish I could tell you. I've got the best stories, but I just can't because, obviously, of discretion,” the sex columnist said.
“Oh, I got politicians. I got actors I could tell you about. I just can't do it.
“There's one who's into small penis humiliation. It's exactly who you think it would be as well.”
Melissa believes the appeal of domination for many of her clients comes from the chance to escape the pressures of everyday responsibility.
“It’s a cliché, but like many clichés contains elements of truth, that people who are usually in positions of power and responsibility often like to relax by having all power and responsibility stripped from them,” she said.
Why clients don't have sex with her
Melissa insists that sex is 'more of a boundary the clients set', surprisingly.
“You don’t have sex with your headmistress or auntie. It would totally ruin the vibe for them,” she explains.
“I have to be the all-powerful disciplinarian-slash-goddess, not some tramp on her back. I can honestly say it’s not something I’m asked for.”
Despite setting in those boundaries from the start, Melissa reveals that some of her clients do fall in love with her, and it's mostly women.
“Here it really helps to have a husband I can blame for not allowing us to get closer,” she admits.
This is the excuse she'll tend to use: “Obviously I’d love to have dinner with you/message you all day long/go on holiday with you, but he forbids it totally. So sorry. He’s such a jealous brute. Ah, what could have been!”
So many weird requests
As a dominatrix, Melissa gets all kinds of requests - some she has to deny.
“There’s one at the moment who likes me to be eaten by my bed, so I sort of fall into my bed and I slowly get devoured by the duvet,” she said. “Then the bed burps out my bra and knickers.”
Meanwhile, another client had a request she refused outright.
“There was a chap who wanted me to park on his hands once. He wanted me to sit in my car singing along to the radio while he was screaming under my wheels,” she recalled.
Others, Melissa says, involve even stranger fetishes.
“There’s a chap who likes me to get my hands stuck in a vase,” she said. “And there’s one who likes me to watch him masturbate on lumps of cheddar.”
How Melissa met her husband
“He auditioned me for a play, in fact. I used to be a stripper, as I said, and I really miss being on stage. So I decided to get back into amateur dramatics. So he auditioned me for a play and, yeah, sort of love at first sight really,” Melissa said.
“I told him straight away, pretty much the first conversation we had, I said, ‘Oh, I’m a porn star.’ And he was so uninterested. That’s what really turned me on.
“Because he went, ‘Oh, whatever.’ Mostly men are fascinated. He really wasn’t. Played hard to get.
“He’s an actor, so he just kind of thinks of it as role play, really. He’s not remotely kinky. He’s totally vanilla. So he just thinks it’s funny, really.
“I think because we’re very self-contained, both of us, we get on with our lives and meet up for dinner and go, ‘What did you do? I p**sed on a chap. What did you do?’ That kind of thing.”
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Adult Industry
Anish Vij