I’ve reached the point where I’d normally be walking out the door, brown paper bag in hand, nonchalant facial expression firmly in place. But today is different. I’m here to interview the manager. ‘Jill? She’s just in the bog love’, the shop assistant says without looking up from her handheld games console. I take the opportunity to survey my surroundings, Keane play on the stereo, creating an inappropriate soundtrack for the hardcore hole-pumping on the plasma screen above me. Technicolor sexual paraphernalia is abound as you’d expect:: edible stimulants, monolithic dildos, £150 dolls gagging to be taken home and shown who’s boss. DVDs, vibrators, a few Unidentified-Fucking-Objects that more readily resemble Joseph Merrick’s skull than items of sexual desire.

When she appears she takes my hand and shakes it roughly, leading me through the staff-only door at the rear of the shop. Lighting an illegal fag she pulls up a stool, and I push a mound of chocolate condoms aside to sit on the shelf opposite her, before asking how she got involved in the sex business.  read the rest