At the time I regarded the shops as entirely separate entities from the party plan. They were nothing like the Ann Summers shops you see today but more like old-style sex shops in terms of both their stock and their customers. Their primary market was mostly the dirty-raincoat brigade as well as tourists and gay men. The shops did a roaring trade in nurses’ uniforms and maids’ outfits (large sizes!) among the cross dressers. Items like gags, whips, handcuffs, chains and masks were mostly sold to the pin-striped City boys as well as to judges, civil servants and politicians. Needless to say, these professional men were overly anxious to portray themselves as fine, upstanding citizens who did not really indulge in anything so sordid as sexual play. They were careful not to leave a paper trail, always paying in cash.
Despite the board’s reservations about the party plan business, they were beginning to discover that women did actually like sex, with the result that the business developed very rapidly. In 1982 I set up a telephone orderline system and employed an eighteen-year-old girl to take the calls. (I wasn’t much more than a girl myself at the time, being still only twenty-one.) At the same time I wanted to make our catalogues more female friendly. Instead of being erotic and playful, until now they had emphasised the seedier side of things. And they definitely did not feature enough underwear that women themselves wanted: as countless department stores will tell you after each Valentine’s Day, there is a big difference between what women want to wear and what men want them to wear, with the result that the more flamboyant lingerie is often returned. Our own research at that time told us that men liked women in red but women thought they liked them in black. The women themselves really liked wearing white or pink – which just proves that something as basic as underwear is not that simple! We covered it by having most items in five standard colours: black, white, red, pink and blue.
At this stage I was using the infrastructure of Gold Star to support my side of the business but the truth was that we were already on to a good thing and would soon start paying our own way. In the first year we recruited more than six hundred party organisers and our first year’s gross turnover was around £80,000. Of course, as it went on I couldn’t run it all myself and was recruiting more staff to help. The company became an all-woman operation and the parties were only for women. Many of the men at Gold Star didn’t understand it and if I’d asked them what French knickers were they wouldn’t have known. As for the parties themselves, they are always hosted by women because we soon found out that women do not like buying things like vibrators when men are around. Our parties are a chance for women to escape their husbands, kids and careers; to forget being a mother or an accountant for a while and tap into another side of themselves. Just as we did on that night in Thamesmead, women enjoy getting together to discuss sex, swap anecdotes and generally relax in each other’s company. Kerry Katona, Mel B, Daniella Westbrook and none other than Zara Phillips – daughter of Princess Anne – are just some of the well known women who’ve been to or held our parties.
The party plan side of the business has gone from strength to strength and today comprises 32 per cent of Ann Summers’ overall business, employing around seven thousand five hundred organisers. We are the largest party plan company in the UK. Many of our recruits have become very successful unit organisers, in charge of dozens of other ladies, and their efforts have my admiration and support. It is always a joy to watch these women brimming with pride and confidence as they pick up awards at our Annual Conference. They are often housewives and mothers who now have the financial independence they never dreamt of. Party organisers join Ann Summers and receive a Starter Kit, which means they can start earning money straight away. The hours are also totally flexible, allowing women to fit their work into their personal circumstances. Our ladies have many opportunities for recognition and reward. Over half of our unit organisers drive company cars and these range from a Ford Fiesta to top-of-the-range Mercedes and BMWs. The earning potential is limitless and the job fits perfectly around young mums. You have to reward your best performers, otherwise you lose them. It’s as simple as that. So we have competitions and incentives every month with high-value prizes.
As anyone who has seen our catalogues will know, we have a lot of fun with our products. One of our most popular party items in the early days were penis mugs: they looked like a regular mug but inside was an attached china penis. When demand overtook supply and we kept running out of stock, Tony saw his chance to impress. He located someone with a kiln with a view to making little china penises. You can imagine how his request was met by a lot of potential suppliers. In addition there were all sorts of practical problems with making the penises. First they were too large so they could be seen peeping over the edge of the mug. Then they detached themselves when a hot drink was poured in, giving a whole new take on the term penile dysfunction. In the end we got it right.
Tony’s insecurity from working for someone was eating away at him and following his success with the penis mugs, he saw his chance to become a supplier for Ann Summers. He knew that I was having trouble getting enough of the right type of lingerie so he decided he would set up his own manufacturing company. We were already using two fairly well-established companies but we were struggling to get enough supply at the right price. Tony saw an opportunity to help us and himself at the same time. I told him that if he could provide the goods we wanted at a cheaper rate than anybody else he would be given the orders. Lest anyone think that he might have had it easy, I should add that he had to deal directly with Ralph Gold, who is one of the toughest negotiators I have ever met. I learnt a lot from Ralph although I occasionally felt sorry for our suppliers. In fact, Ralph’s ruthlessness put at least one of them out of business. This was long before we bought from the Far East. One of the most important elements of our business – or indeed most businesses – is making sure we have a balance between good quality and regular supply.
Always searching for opportunities to reach a wider audience, in August 1985 I set off for Bristol with Tony, a designer called Angela Bailey and some of my employees. We were going to set up a stand at the Woman’s World Exhibition being held there. The exhibition comprised everything from cosmetics and bridal wear to household goods, and provided an excellent opportunity to promote ourselves in the West Country. Our stand was actually like a room you could walk into and was themed all in pink. We displayed our lingerie, and made a small private cubicle within the stand where our sex toys were displayed on a shelf. There was nothing too risqué, just some of our most popular vibrators. We made sure the room was organised so that nobody could just walk in, and we specified they had to be over eighteen.
My aim was primarily to promote the parties rather than actually sell anything from the stand. BBC Radio West came to interview us and while I hadn’t had much experience with the media I thought it would be good publicity. I heard the interview played later that day and was pleased with the way it went. It had the desired effect: lots of people came to our stand to have a look around. Tony stood there handing out catalogues and everyone seemed really positive, with the exception of two visitors. They were plain-clothes police officers, who informed me that unless I closed down the stand I would be arrested. The charge was – and I still find this ludicrous – running a sex shop without a license! I have to admit I was a bit scared but I was also annoyed. I did what I would continue to do years later when confronted with challenges: I stood my ground. I informed the senior officer that since I wasn’t selling anything, this could not be classed as a sex shop. Therefore I did not need a license to be here. At the time I wasn’t sure if I had the law on my side – I simply decided to bluff – but it turned out later that I did. Even today Ann Summers does not need a license since it is quite rightly not classified as a sex shop. The police officer retaliated by saying that he would return the next day to see if I had packed up the stand. If I hadn’t, he would arrest me.
Tony, Angela and I shook our heads in disbelief as we watched them leave.
At that point my bravado nearly deserted me and I was convinced that they were going to march me off to the cells. I needed to talk to someone who had been through it all before so I called my dad, who had been through it all with his magazines. He was wonderful as always and reassured me, saying that what happened next would probably be at the discretion of the police officer. My view was that I wasn’t going to give in and I was quite prepared to be thrown in prison because I was technically right: I was not running a sex shop. After the euphoria of the morning, the gloss had now been taken off things a bit and we all went back to the hotel feeling dispirited and drained. Nonetheless I was ready for a fight! Next morning I arrived at our stand early. I kept an eye out all day for the police officers. They never returned and the stand was up all week.
This was just one of our many encounters with authorities. On one occasion we were contacted by one of our party organisers in Guernsey, who was having difficulty receiving her products as customs would only let the lingerie through. They confiscated all of the vibrators, whips and novelties and even a book called All That Men Know About Women which had nothing but blank pages. We asked customs to tell us what products they would accept but they wouldn’t cooperate, so we had to find our own way round the problem: we changed the names of our products on the invoices. For instance, a vibrator which was listed as ‘Bully Boy Vibrator’ was simply changed to ‘Prince’. It worked – no one was alerted to anything unusual on the invoice and we were able to send products without intervention. In my world there is always a way through.
Tony is, in many respects, an old-fashioned man. He was brought up in a Catholic family and it’s fair to say his idea of marital bliss is a traditional one, with a wife at home looking after the children. He was insistent about us having children and piled on the pressure. I was not against the idea of a family but I’ve always felt the time has to be right. I don’t believe in having children at any cost and right at that moment I was in my mid-twenties and trying to build a business. At the same time my confidence was growing and I felt that I was starting to discover who Jacqueline really was. It wasn’t long before Tony’s insecurity gave way to jealousy. He would get extremely tense and go into a sulk. Or he’d go the other way and get so worked up that he would fly off into a rage. All of this made it hard for me to celebrate my success and I reconciled myself to playing it down. Once you start doing that with your partner, then you really are in trouble because you’re embarking on a course of behaviour where you’re literally editing your life for them. Ultimately if you can’t share your glory as well as your misery, it just won’t work. You can’t make another person feel more secure by undermining yourself. Tony was, and is, a good man and I’ve always said that he is the perfect husband in so many ways. But we were starting to drift apart and the chasm was getting wider by the day.
Despite Tony’s moodiness, nothing could stop me feeling good about myself. I began to lose the weight I had carried for so long, first by paying attention to my diet, which was something that hadn’t occurred to me before. I didn’t do anything drastic: I just stopped eating whatever came to hand and ate more healthily. I also started attending aerobics classes four times a week, which helped. For the first time I started going to the hairdressers regularly. My whole appearance was now beginning to change. Over several months I lost two stone in weight, reaching eight stone which was not just more attractive but also much healthier for my height of 5 feet 2 inches. It also meant I could get into some of the clothes I had avoided wearing. I felt more confident but also younger and more spirited. Instead of the timid, shy girl he’d married, Tony was now living with a glamorous young businesswoman – but he didn’t like it. I wasn’t getting compliments from him but I was getting them from everyone else which just made things worse. I started to become seriously unhappy and lost interest in the relationship. I didn’t want to play down my achievements anymore: I just wanted to get out there and live, and he was holding me back.
I did make an attempt to seek help through relationship counselling, which he agreed to come to. Deep down I realised that it was going to be almost impossible to resolve our situation: this wasn’t just an obstacle in the marriage of two kindred spirits, this was about the fact that one of us was making a major life transition and was, in effect, becoming somebody completely different. There were three major issues between us, any one of which would have tested a relationship: Tony wanted a family more than anything; I was becoming a career girl with big dreams; and I had a new, unstoppable confidence.
In 1986 we moved to Chaldon to an old school house with an air raid shelter in the garden that was perfect for Tony to run his new business from. It was a really sweet, gorgeous house and we’d fallen in love with it. When I tell you it was called ‘Willey Broom’ you can see why there was no question we had to have it! The move seemed to give Tony extra impetus and he did his best to spoil me, but the relationship was beyond repair. He’d hoped that the new house and his foray into lingerie manufacturing would give us a fresh start but while it momentarily revved things up, it was never going to address the longer-term issues. Our relationship was slowly disintegrating and any measures we were taking just seemed to further highlight the deep divisions in the way we saw our lives. It hadn’t helped that I’d had such a dysfunctional childhood that I married earlier than I should.
One evening in November 1988 we were invited to dinner at a friend’s place in Sevenoaks and as I looked around at her cosy little flat, I began to envy her independence. I felt trapped and at that moment I knew I just wanted to break free and live my life again. Back home, we ended up having a big row and Tony went for a drive in his car to cool down. While he was gone I quickly packed a suitcase and went to my dad’s for two weeks; Tony seemed to be on the phone every five minutes trying to persuade me to come back. I told him the marriage was over and that I loved him but I had outgrown the relationship. Both my loyalty to Tony and my perfectionist streak meant that my family had no idea we had any problems so it came as a shock to them. We had a good time – ten years in all – but I definitely think I married too young. Looking back, it feels as though I was the youngest twenty-year-old ever to get married. Tony remarried, has a family and is a wonderful husband and father. We remained friends and still meet up for lunch every now and then.
While I had loved Tony, our relationship was very much one that reflected the place I was in at the time. Back then I was a young, inexperienced girl who’d lived this stifled, traumatic life inside the walls of her own home. I had only stepped out into the world when I started part-time work and, compared to other fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds, did not have the normal range of experiences: I didn’t know what it was like to socialise normally, let alone how to conduct a relationship. Tony was my Prince Charming: good-looking, hard working and stable, he also provided the most wonderful reason for me to escape my mother’s house. Perhaps if I had been more streetwise and confident, I might have waited longer to get married. Or I might not have married at all. However, I have no regrets: it was an important time in my life. I outgrew the relationship and, although it was painful for both of us at the time, it could have been worse if I had not had the courage to understand what was going on. I think once you realise that things have irretrievably changed, anything else after that is pretending. You are being dishonest both to yourself and to the other person. I know it’s easy to stay with something familiar and even to convince yourself that is what you really want because the thought of the world out there is terrifying. So is the thought of potentially hurting someone else. All I can say is that you will hurt them more if you stay with them under false pretences.
CHAPTER FOUR
My sister, my friend
After Tony and I split up in November 1988 all I wanted to do was live in my own flat, just like my friend in Sevenoaks. I found a new two-bedroom property in Croydon which cost £90,000. I lived there for two years and finally felt I was in charge and in control of my life. I had money, I had my own furn
iture and most importantly I now had the independence I had been seeking since childhood. I also had my sister, Vanessa. As children we were not as close as we might have been if there was perhaps only a three- or four-year age gap. Seven years between us meant that we had not really had the chance to establish any common ground. It was not until she was sixteen and I was twenty-three and married to Tony that we became friends. One day she came over to the house where Tony and I lived in Biggin Hill and something wonderful happened: we found each other.
She was standing with me in an upstairs bedroom while I sorted through bags of jumpers and clothes for some of the parties we were trying out at the time. I don’t know why I did it but I suddenly asked her whether everything was all right at home. It started as a very awkward conversation with us both skirting around the taboo subject that we had never previously discussed. Neither of us spoke directly about the abuse we had suffered as children but enough was said for us to understand each other. It was one of those moments of recognition, where we both realised how important we were to each other and how we had so much in common, not just as sisters, but as people. We didn’t need to spell it all out verbally: we just both instinctively knew we had a bond that could not be broken.
While I was working on this book, I asked her how she felt and she expressed the moment beautifully: ‘For me that was the day that the age gap closed between us and I met and fell in love with my sister. In my mind that sealed our friendship forever – I was no longer alone.’ But it was in that same conversation that Vanessa also told me how painful it was when I left home to be with Tony. Her description of it makes me cry.
Please Let It Stop Page 5