‘There was no better madam than me. It was one happy family’
FORMER BROTHEL BOSS LOOKS BACK ON COLOURFUL CAREER AS MEMOIR ATTRACTS INTEREST FROM SCREENWRITER
“IT was a light-hearted, humorous business I ran. It was real fun and there was always a lot of laughter.”
After three decades working as a madam, Vivien Walden remembers her life working in brothels with fondness.
As hostess of the former Toucan club in Swinton, she would spend her days welcoming clients and managing the club.
The businesswoman prided herself on catering for every possible fetish and sexual fantasy, even providing a ‘menu’ of services.
She invested thousands of pounds into the club to create a safe haven for clients and the women who worked there.
Toucan had dressing up rooms, an area for disabled clients and even a dungeon – complete with whips and masks.
“Whatever they wanted was provided for them. I don’t think brothels could do that nowadays,” says Vivien. “A man’s appetite for sex controls his whole body once they get that feeling. You also have people with different sexual tastes that we had to provide a service for.”
Many of the businessmen who visited the brothel charged the services to their expense accounts. It was, as Vivien says, ‘just business’ after all. Though she never discusses money, Vivien says all her colleagues were very well paid.
She herself took her salary from the entrance fees and through tips. But her colleagues kept every penny of the money they earned.
“When the girls had a good day it was expected that the madam gets tipped,” she says. “That’s how I ran my business.
“When the girls have a luxurious place to work, everything they need and a top-class madam, everybody benefits.”
According to Vivien it was her meticulous eye for detail that made the club so popular.
She had a strict policy on drugs and insisted on a clean bill of health from each worker.
“We always had a pretty happy atmosphere and we had a reputation for having a top-class clientèle,” she says.
“I had years of experience in the business and there was no better madam than me. It was one happy family.”
Vivien opened her first brothel in Preston during the 1970s and went on to run dozens of establishments across Greater Manchester and Cheshire.
They ranged from a 24-hour brothel to the Deansgate-based Exon Escorts – one of the first escort agencies in Manchester.
Vivien’s escorts, both male and female, were not necessarily expected to sleep with customers but had to keep an ‘open mind.’
“You would get businessmen staying over in Manchester working hard all day, they would go back to a lonely hotel suite and need company.
“That company starts with wine and a meal and then the bed is needed.
“They were getting stuff they could not even think of asking for and would then go home to their ordinary life.”
Despite the success of Exon Escorts, it was the Toucan club that Vivien was most devoted to.
Taking responsibilty for every aspect, she welcomed guests, manned the phones and kept the club’s daily appointment book in check.
“I treated the girls like princesses and I was rewarded for it. I suppose people think a brothel is just a bit of fluff but I ran it as a legitimate business. I paid my taxes and VAT. The taxman knew exactly how the money was divided.”
After more than 30 years, Toucan was closed down by police in 2009.
Vivien maintains that officers working at a police station just half a mile from the club knew exactly what was going on there.
She says her ‘well run’ business should never have been closed.
After pleading guilty to running a brothel, Vivien was given community service and a six-month suspended prison sentence.
“I was hugely angry at the time because it was one of the best-run brothels in the country.
“But you move on and life moves on,” she says.
“When the raid happened I was ready for retirement anyway. You walk out of that door and you are another person.”
Vivien, who lives in Cheshire, recently penned a tell-all autobiography, Eating From The Cherry Tree.
The book has been picked up by a British scriptwriter and is due to be turned into a film.
The experience has brought back many memories of Vivien’s former life in a job she firmly believes should be legalised.
“If the girls are indoors in a safe house and not out in the street it is far safer,” she says. “Being on the street is so risky.”