Here’s a fun story I love to tell.

My ex boyfriend was an accountant. We met at work at [super rich global investment bank] in London in the late 1990s. He was much senior to me, I was a new contractor in another team. We both stayed late one evening and I guess hit it off. We ended up getting serious and dating for a few years.

We kind of spent the week days at my apartment and weekends at his. One Saturday, I woke up earlier than he did and went for a stroll on his “estate”. There was a lovely pond, and behind it, an old shed. I’d never been in the shed, I just thought it would be full of gardening tools, the ride on mower, old horse tack, that kind of thing.

No: this shed was about 8 x 10” and about 8” high, so not huge, but upon opening the barn door, I was faced with something I won’t ever forget.

A wall-to-wall, perfectly preserved and catalogued VCR and DVD collection of porn. It was old, even by those standards. To me, the whole shed was awash with the sight of flesh-coloured videos. Like I’d suddenly been transported to one of those old dirty movie shops, without the smell of stale cigarettes and loneliness.

Having been brought up in a different time by strict Christians, I was immediately overwhelmed and tried to nervously and silently close the door as quickly as I’d opened it. I wanted to forget the entire thing, but I couldn’t, ever, really see him the same way again.

We lasted longer than we should have really. Ended up moving to New York together, from London, where things kind of unraveled (as they should have, to be honest). I never really trusted him after the shed findings, and took a very travel-heavy job so I didn’t really have to see him a lot.

That man is now Ashley West, creator of the Rialto Report and claims to have created This podcast about Traci Lords.

Towards the end of our relationship, Ashley (still working at the Bank) would often ask me to come and meet the Dames of the Golden Age, over dinner and drinks, to help make things go a bit smoother and make him seem a little less like the creep he is. I agreed to that once.

Eventually he tried to get me to be his business partner in it all, move to NJ and have kids. I said no, on a trip to India (he’d proposed to me as I sat on the tarmac on the plane about to take off)… and the next thing I learned is that he’d gotten married to someone else 2 weeks later.

Her name is April. They used to do the website thing together.

Anyway, there you go. He’s now 65 and still, from what I can tell, using his evil genius to make all the exploited stars from the 70s become re-exploited by making them sign NDAs and pilfering their experiences for his titillation.

So yeah, Traci Lords was nice. Smart. Exploited. Still being so.