BAD NAME FOR HOOKERS

I don’t know how to put this delicately in a family Sunday paper but it has been patently obvious in recent days that a couple of Australian hookers have been giving prostitutes a bad name.

First there was “model” Sarah Marbeck. She saw David Beckham’s former PR/PA, Rebecca Loos, pop up in the News of the World to get paid a poultice for her “ lay and pay” confessions about romps with the soccer star.

Before you could even change the sheets Ms Marbeck was shouting “me too” and talked about her “ undying love” for Posh Spice’s husband. There were London Sunday newspaper revelations of how she slept with her mobile phone for more than a year yearning for his call.

In the now-Shane Warne tradition both women claimed they had exchanged horny e-mails with the married captain and Real Madrid star. Don’t these guys ever learn?

I suspect, but I can’t know, that there probably was some horizontal folk dancing between Beckham and both women but Marbeck’s picture of a lengthy, passionate, love affair started to quickly wilt like flowers at a summer prom.

In her reportedly $800,000 expose in News of the World she forgot to mention that, by the way, she had been a one thousand dollar an hour hooker in Sydney.

Her brothel boss there told me she conned him, scammed him, out of $7000 to go to Perth to see her mother who was dying of cancer and to pay for the funeral. She used the money to go to London to see a Beckham football game. He’d had cancer himself so he now considers himself an easy mark.

Sarah Marbeck made some more money (this time not lying down) by appearing on A Current Affair. Among other things she prattled on tearfully about wanting people to give her a chance, that her heart “ has always been in the right place” (just behind her boobs for hire) and all she really wanted out of all of this is to find out why Beckham stopped calling her. Why not send him another text message?

The other story that has been giving Aussie hookers a band name in recent days concerns a young woman named Michelle Taylor.

She is 20-year-old alleged mainchancer and grafter and jewel thief accused of stealing a $1 million watch from a client’s drawer at Crown Casino.

He was a high-roller. So apparently was she. Taylor appeared in the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court this week charged with stealing a watch valued at $300,000. The claim is it is worth much more.

Outside the court Taylor, who says she went to Melbourne Girls’ Grammar and works from a suburban brothel, appeared to be her own worst enemy.

She was quoted as saying things like:

“It looked like a real shit watch, probably worth $10,000 if it was real, with diamonds all over the band that looked like fake glitter. l I am not some kind of jewel thief.”

Well, if you steal a watch worth only ten grand then I have news for you honey: if convicted you are a jewel thief.

She also protested that she couldn’t understand how this had ended up in court because “I gave the watch back… I had it for only 12 hours”.

And why? Because after servicing her client and allegedly stealing the watch and hiding it under her mattress at the brothel Police came knocking on her door and found it.

Michelle Taylor also came up with a quote that takes me off on a tangent. She said: “I am an actress. That’s all I do.”

No you are not Michelle. You are a prostitute. A hooker. A whore. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.

I support legalized prostitution. Accept it is the “oldest profession in the world”. But call a spade a spade.

They are not “sex industry workers”. They are prostitutes. Many have been lured into, and then trapped into, selling their bodies for drugs. Especially heroin. And it is unscrupulous and callous men who are usually responsible.

Many, too many, die wretched deaths, wretchedly young. When I was doing HINCH on the Seven Network we did a story about a former model who got “hooked on the horse” and turned to prostitution to support her heroin habit.

I will never forget that story. We had some glamorous shots from her model’s “go-see” book. I had seen them before we met in the studio for the interview.

This anorexic, ageing woman walked into the studio with skin so sick-looking and pockmarked it looked like the dark side of the moon. I am sure she died not long after because this WAS a dead woman walking.

Coincidentally, I had an African acquaintance (through a friend) who was doing drugs and I suspect was on the game. In my new book I mention an incident where she turned up at my Mt. Macedon farm – off her face – at 9 o’clock one weekend morning. Her name was Eiyun Hassanabdli.

We stood on the farmhouse verandah and I called her a “disgusting, snivelling, black, 23-year-old and you won’t make 24”.

She didn’t listen and she didn’t make 24. I picked up a Sydney Sunday paper a few months later and read that Eiyun had been found naked and very dead in a dump master in King’s Cross.

That is often the real brutal world of drugs and prostitutes. It’s a long way from the posh world of David Beckham.

April 24, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004