The numbers are all-important – but some are easier to count than others. The woman known as Bonnie Blue is totting up how many men she has had sex with in her life.
She started young, she tells me. ‘I was 13; he was 14. We didn’t know what we were doing.’
She’d only reached a relatively modest five by the time she was married, but then the numbers started to inch up.
Obviously, earlier this month, there was a stratospheric leap in just one day – but where are we up to in total, I ask her.
‘My number is about 1,700 now,’ she says, matter-of-factly, as if discussing company profit margins.
That’s a lot of no-strings sex we are talking about, but out of interest – and not that the things are always linked – how many times was she in love with the person she was having sex with?
‘Once,’ she says. ‘I’ve only been in love once, with my ex [husband], and I’ve not really been in a relationship since we split up. I’m not focused on finding love, though. If it happens, it happens, but I’m fully aware that “it” is going to make that pool a lot smaller.’
By ‘it’ she means the notorious incident that has turned Bonnie Blue – real name Tia Billinger – into the most infamous sex worker of our age.
Bonnie Blue – real name Tia Billinger – matter-of-factly reveals the number of men she’s slept with now tops 1,700, as if discussing company profit margins
Talking to her today, in her first interview since she bedded more than 1,000 men in a day, is alarming not just in unprecedented scales of debauchery she recounts but in her chilling sense of detachment, too.
‘I thought it was going to be tough on my body,’ she explains. ‘I took painkillers thinking: OK, I’m probably going to need this by the end of the day. But, actually, I was fine afterwards. A bit tired, but only in the way you would be after 12 hours of physical activity.’
And you had a nice cup of tea afterwards? ‘We did some interviews – I had a documentary team with me – and then I went home and had a burger and a Diet Coke,’ she says breezily. ‘It certainly didn’t put me off my food. I was very hungry, actually, because I hadn’t eaten all day.’
This was no ordinary shift, even for a woman who was by now used to selling her wares. No money even passed hands – this ‘event’ was entirely free.
She offered to have sex with as many men as she could within the space of 12 hours to break the world record. The only stipulation was that participants would allow filming to take place and consent for the footage to be used on her OnlyFans site.
Those walking past the elegant £15million mansion in London’s Portland Place – just a stone’s throw from the BBC’s Broadcasting House – wouldn’t have been aware why so many men were queuing around the block. But the whole point of this endeavour was to make it as public as possible so that videos and testimony could soon start to emerge. Yes, this young woman had reached her 1,000 target, but since there were an extra 57 men hanging around, she managed to accommodate them, too.
How? Even leaving aside the not insignificant matter of morality, the maths is mind-boggling.
Amateur sleuths have pored over the footage and the consensus is that each man had 41 seconds with her. There were also an awful lot of socks. Was it a requirement that the men kept them on?
Amateur sleuths have pored over the footage and the consensus is that each man had 41 seconds with Bonnie during her ‘sex marathon’
‘No, it was up to them what they wore or didn’t wear. Some kept a T-shirt on, some had their socks on, some their shoes.’
It sounds like a warped Carry On film rather than an erotic experience. Bonnie today says that she wasn’t really counting the men herself, but did take note of some of the faces.
‘There were some very attractive ones, and I’ve kept in contact since,’ she says, but adds: ‘There were some I wouldn’t swipe on Tinder’.
Although this event took place in London – and very much in person – our interview is conducted on Zoom because Bonnie has decamped to Vegas, eager to grasp every opportunity for global domination.
It’s a surreal and disturbing experience having her talk me through the day she reckons was the pinnacle of her career.
Is it true one woman tried to haul her son out? ‘I was in the room, so I don’t know the ins and outs of all that, but he queued up, then I slept with him, took his virginity… but then the mum was banging outside the door saying, We need to leave.’
No, she does not have any sympathy with that poor woman. ‘It was his decision. I don’t know why you’d bring your mum.’
Mothers in general do have an issue with her line of work, she says – and in particular her targeting of sexually inexperienced men (the precursor to this event saw her sleep with a string of students during freshers week in Nottingham).
‘Some people think their sons are beyond innocent, are not watching porn from a young age and are not sleeping with multiple people. Parents like to be naive about these things, so when they see me speaking proudly about it, suddenly I’m this villain. Really, I’m offering their children sex in a safe and controlled environment.’
Hell may freeze over before she’s recognised for services to society, but let’s hope the men involved went to get themselves tested at the STI clinic after their time with her – because she did.
‘I had the full panel – they take bloods, swabs. They test for every STI. I will have another next week, and the one after that. I’m aware that with the amount of people I am sleeping with, I need to be tested regularly.’
Have you ever contracted an STI, I ask. ‘Not yet, but could it happen in the future? 100 per cent. I’m aware of the risks.’
She even claims, distressingly, that she’s willing to chance contracting HIV in the name of her work, which suggests not only an alarming lack of awareness of her own safety but a shameful ignorance of a life-changing illness.
Bonnie’s mum Sarah, pictured right, is on her payroll. ‘My whole family is employed by me, but that’s because I earn a lot of money and I want to support them,’ Bonnie says.
‘HIV is the big one,’ she says matter-of-factly, ‘and I still choose to do it. I’m happy to risk the things I risk to do.
‘If you called me a sl*t, I would take it as a compliment,’ she adds with a smile. ‘It’s hard work sleeping with this many people.’
What on earth does her mother, Sarah, really think? It’s been rumoured that the former hairdresser – who is now on her payroll – is her pimp. Not true, she says.
‘My mum jokes about that, saying: “I couldn’t even get you to clean your room, let alone sleep with 1,000 men.” No, I do it because I want to do it. My family don’t pimp me out. Yes, my whole family is employed by me, but that’s because I earn a lot of money and I want to support them.’
How much money are we talking, here? ‘I’ve just hit £1 million a month.’
Also on the payroll – along with her sister and her stepdad – is her ex-husband, Ollie Davidson, who was her childhood sweetheart.
It has been reported that, although previously supportive of her, he has been appalled by her latest antics. Absolutely not true, she says. ‘We still work together. He travels with me.’
Doing what? ‘He oversees the team. We aren’t together as a couple any more, but he is part of this.’
A veritable family business – but one where only one worker is taking all the risks. Yet last night, she tells me, she sat in her rented Airbnb with members of her family doing a jigsaw. She says even she finds it weird sometimes when her ‘normal’ family life clashes with her work one.
‘On New Year’s Eve, I had all the family at my house but I was recording a video in the bedroom so they had to be quiet for half an hour. But then I came out and there were fireworks and it was lovely.’
How on earth a girl who likes jigsaws ends up with the life she has is unfathomable. She grew up in Nottinghamshire, liked dance classes and once wanted to be a midwife. Her biological father has never really been on the scene, but she is quick to say that this is ‘not a factor’. ‘People say “there must be Daddy issues”, there must be some trauma. But there isn’t.’
When she met Ollie, a rugby player, she seemed set on a ‘small life like most people have… marriage, children, a nice house, job in an office… small dreams’.
But her story shatters the myth that only the desperate sell themselves. Ollie’s parents helped them buy their first home and they were clearly never on the breadline. She tells me that their sex life was ‘perfectly healthy’, if not unremarkable.
‘For me, sex was something you did when you go to bed, before you go to sleep. Now it’s like an adventure. It’s a hobby.’
Bonnie received flak for sleeping with a string of students during freshers week in Nottingham
Who knows if it’s significant, but the only time she talks about men with disdain is with reference to the time she worked for a corporate recruitment company as a 16-year-old apprentice. One of the men there behaved in a way she now feels was unacceptable.
‘I did try to raise it. I thought “actually, this isn’t OK”, but he was a manager, so I didn’t have a leg to stand on.’
What did he do, exactly? ‘I won’t say,’ she replies, suddenly coy about sexual matters, ‘But he crossed a line.’
In 2022, Ollie and Tia moved to Australia, where money did become an issue. So became bored with corporate life.
‘I liked the idea of having my own business. I did look at other things, such as property, but even then you have to have serious money to start with.’
She makes it sound like it’s entirely normal to leap from browsing RightMove to at-home porn platforms.
At the time, that area of the internet – giving opportunity to ordinary folk to turn themselves into porn stars – was just exploding.
With Ollie’s encouragement, she gave being a ‘cam girl’ a whirl, putting an image of herself on a site and agreeing to ‘chat’ with a paying stranger. It was a revelation.
‘Soon I was making £2,000 a week, and I found that I enjoyed the interaction. I loved talking to people.’
Even men who wanted to reveal their most vile fantasies? Especially that – Bonnie had been born.
She had only been ‘in the industry’ for a week when her mum – back home in the UK – received a leaked video featuring her.
Did she, and Bonnie’s stepfather, freak out? ‘She wasn’t disgusted,’ she says, ‘but she was worried. She thought maybe someone was making me do it, or that there were money problems.
‘I had always been going to tell her, but I was navigating my way in the industry. And once they realised I was happy, they were fine with it. They are like any parents. They just want me to be happy.’
She could have remained in the shadows of the sex industry, but there was more money to be made by aiming for the spotlight.
When she started actually meeting men for sex, her earnings soared.
‘I thought I’d do it for a couple of years, but actually then I realised I was enjoying it.’ The money or the sex? ‘Both’.
This brings us on to the subject of how Bonnie can possibly be telling the truth when she says she enjoyed being penetrated by more than 1,000 men in one day. I expect her to try to convince me that she was swinging from the chandeliers throughout, in some sort of orgasmic stupor, but she says she wasn’t.
The day, she claims, ‘wasn’t about me, but about giving men pleasure’, glossing over the fact that it’s made her an internet sensation. ‘I did have two orgasms, but towards the end.’
If she complains about the men’s behaviour, worryingly, it’s only to say that she thinks they were too gentle with her. ‘If anything they were overly respectful.’
She hits out at any suggestion that she is trying to claim this activity is normal.
‘I’ve been accused of normalising this. Well, it’s clearly not normal – which is why it has got so much attention.’
But about the young women who might look at what she is doing and see pound signs. Does she think she is a good role model?
‘I wouldn’t say I am a bad role model. I speak about consent and the fact that sex should be about enjoyment. If someone is doing something to you in the bedroom and you want it done differently, you should speak up and say so.
‘A lot of girls feel intimidated by sex. Sex can be very dangerous. You can put people in a dangerous situation – but then it can be dangerous walking home from work.’
Unbelievably, she says her self-respect is intact. ‘People think I’ve got no respect for myself, but I’ve never had more respect for myself in my life. When I was working in an office, I used to accept having 20 days of holiday a year and paid once a month. I am so much bigger than that now.’
True, but at what price? After all, what is the rest of Bonnie’s life going to look like? After such notoriety, hasn’t she destroyed any chance of a happy ever after?
‘I’ve definitely not trashed it,’ she believes. ‘It will be harder for me to find someone but I know the life I’ve created for myself and my future children will be so much better than the one I had before.’
As if that isn’t misguided enough, she points out that she doesn’t need a partner anyway (given her earnings and ready access to sex), so children ‘could come via IVF’.
And how, I wonder, would she explain all this to any future sons or daughters? ‘They’d know about it from an early age,’ she says. ‘I don’t know how I’d approach it, but I wouldn’t keep it hidden.’
Judging by the online phenomenon she’s created, chance would be a fine thing. But perhaps the biggest tragedy of all is that she is still only 25 years old, still achingly young. Will she still be so proud of her legacy in fifty years time? Depressingly, at least to the rest of us, she reckons she has years of this ahead.
‘I’d like to do an event like this every four to six weeks,’ she tells me. ‘This was just a warm-up.’