Mama's got a licence

...fancy a cup of tea?

An amoral slag?

How many people you’ve shagged exactly equates to your worth as a human. Rate yourself on our scale to find out if you are a sexual failure or an amoral slag:

Zero
It’s tragic that you’ve never experienced the joy of sexual intimacy with another person, loser. Lower your standards and get on with it or the vicar will intone ‘Sadly, he remained a pathetic virgin’ as your coffin is lowered at your funeral.

One
You’re one of these sickening people who met their life partner aged 17 and have been together ever since. Stop being so bloody unadventurous and have an affair, even if it ruins a blissful relationship, leads to divorce and your kids end up broken and ashamed.

Two to five
Not really trying, are you? Stuck in a rut of caring, respectful, long-term relationships? Seriously rethink your attitude and get out there, drunkenly sleeping with anyone you meet in grim nightclubs while creating a shitload of emotional hassle for yourself when they think you’re a couple now.

Five to 20
At 12 or above you’re in the porking ‘sweet spot’: sexually experienced, clearly desirable to the opposite sex, and you can pretend to be mortified about what a sexual adventurer you are while you’re showing off.

20 to 40
A very respectable number of notches on the bedpost, but you’re moving towards promiscuity and herpes. Our outdated patriarchal society is horribly judgmental about women having casual relationships, but also hates men who do it because they’re genetically blessed with looks and don’t need an interesting personality. Scum.

60-plus
There’s a word for people like you: ‘popular’. It’s worth doing a cost-benefit analysis of your endless unsatisfying hook-ups and maybe doing something more fulfilling, like deep-cleaning the bathroom.

2,000+
You’re either a prostitute or a member of Motley Crue, so this is fine because it’s your job.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Well, I never charged (couldn't afford the refunds), and I've never been much of a fan of heavy metal rock music, but I think all this time I might have been a member of the band...

How about you, dear reader?

Call me Madam

Today is International Whores' Day, dear reader, as you undoubtedly already know... It has been celebrated annually since 1976. In German, it is known as Hurentag (Whore's Day). In Spanish-speaking countries, it is the Día Internacional de la Trabajadora Sexual, the International Day of the Sex Worker. In Amsterdam, a statue (above) called "Belle" was erected [outside the Oude Kerk in the Red-light District, directly opposite the hotel we usually stay in when we're there; of course] by way of a tribute.

To mark this auspicious day, here's some whores...

Avenue D - Do I Look Like a Slut?

John Sex - Hustle With My Muscle

Murat Boz - Aşkı Bulamam Ben

Don't forget your PPE.

Who will buy?

So France - home of Madame du Barry and fellow courtesans, "Irma la Douce", "Satine", La Dame aux Camélias, "Zaza" and a cavalcade of grandes horizontales - has introduced a law making it illegal to pay for sex. You couldn't make it up.

By way of tribute to those hard-working ladies (soon to be out of a job?), here are a couple of classics...

...from Miss Merman...

Ethel Merman - Ten Cents a Dance

...and Mr Fierstein in Torch Song Trilogy (of course)!

Oo-la-la!

My Pleasure is My Business

Long before 50 Shades of Grey, before Belle de Jour, before Emmanuelle, even before Deep Throat, there was Miss Xaviera Hollander - author, Penthouse columnist, performer, raconteur and theatrical entrepreneur - The Happy Hooker!



The great Madam, celebrating her 70th birthday today, caused a sensation when her no-holds-barred memoir was published way back in 1971. Telling the story of her life as a Japanese internment survivor in the Dutch East Indies and her progress from secretary to call-girl to proprietor of the fabulously-named Vertical Whorehouse in New York, it broke all the boundaries for its depictions of uninhibited sexual encounters from the woman's perspective, and laid the foundations for much of the "sexual liberation" [especially soft - and hardcore - porn] that was abundant in the 1970s.



Now running the "Happy House" B&B in Amsterdam (where else?), she offers "workshops" to couples: "Here she will, after a nice meal, cooked by her adorable husband Philip, teach you THE ART OF LOVEMAKING, or in short 'the DO's and DON'ts of sex.'" Ahem.

She is uncompromising about the later "stars" who followed her lead into the world of erotica:

Xaviera on Sylvia Kristel: "Not a very good actress, and thick, I think, not like me, as I am brainy."

On Linda Lovelace, who came to her for a job as one of her hookers but was turned down: "I said to her: 'You look too shabby. I'm sorry, you do. You have no class.' She had buck teeth from all the blow-jobs she'd given."

Now, it seems, a whole musical is in production, based upon her life and her Happy Hooker memoirs - this could be interesting! Here are a couple of the numbers:

Happy Hooker - the musical: Theatre of Cruelty

Happy Hooker - the musical: Standing Proud

I guess it won't just be candles this fabulous woman will be blowing on her birthday.

Xaviera Hollander official website

Read an interview with Miss Hollander by Deborah Ross in The Independent in December 2012.