‘She’s been a hooker a brothel-keeper and served time in prison for grevious assault but now Charlie Daniels who has Belfast roots wants to save girls from life on the streets. Jane Hardy reports\r\n\r\nThe wit and wisdom of Charlie Daniels would make a sizeable book. The woman from the (very) mean streets of the north of England trots out aphorisms and bons mots as we talk in the reception area of Belfast’s Ramada Encore Hotel like a seasoned stand-up. It has to be said that this middle-aged woman who is in Northern Ireland on a search for her roots in the Shankill area of the city but has a back story involving prostitution living in care and writing a book on her experience has pretty good material.\r\n\r\nShe recalls one television appearance: “Philip Scofield leant forward when I was on This Morning and said ‘Charlie you must hate men.’ I leant forward and said ‘No Philip I love men and I love sex’. I went on TV to talk about swinging and was pitched against an Archdeacon. In the green room he said to me ‘I really like swingers — you knowFrank Sinatra and Dean Martin.’ I had 30 seconds to put him right and he was so grateful we got on much better on air than the producer wanted with me saying ‘The couple that plays together stays together.’ and him quoting the bible.”\r\n\r\nAnd towards the end of our chat when we have returned from the Shankill where Charlie Daniels has been searching for her grandparents’ homeshe says: “I’m like a gay man trapped in a woman’s body — I like camp musicals and I like the male body.”\r\n\r\nShe’s 41 and her style is Mrs Berlusconi crossed with just about every Northern (English and Northern Irish) woman who likes leopardprint. The dress in question is a subtle figure-hugging animal print. The boots are black leather expensive and have fierce five-inch heels.\r\n\r\nThere’s a story behind Charlie’s enthusiasm for the stiletto which goes a long way to encapsulate her life.\r\n\r\nShe explains in a Yorkshire accent that is broad warm and likeable: “When I was in the children’s home and got to the age when I had a clothes allowance I said I wanted to choose what I wore. So I went out and bought some five inch red stilletoes.”\r\n\r\nThe rule instigated by the home was that she could wear them to Jordansthorpe Comprehensive school as long as she kept wearing them for a year. “You could say that broke me in and I’ve found heels very comfortable ever since.”\r\n\r\nMs Daniels’ life is so packed with colourful incident it should be scripted by Lynda La Plante and immediately made into a sizzling drama for television. This very bright lady anticipates people’s incredulous reaction to some of the purpler passages and later in our conversation she says: “People have said to me ‘Is that bulls***?’ but I don’t need to make anything up.”\r\n\r\nShe certainly doesn’t. Her birth mother Kathleen was born and brought up in the Shankill before moving to the north of England and Charlie was removed from her mother’s care at birth there. The narrative thereafter is Dickensian in its relentless downward trajectoryredeemed at the last by a sideways move into campaigning to help the sort of girl she was 20 years ago. Charlie left school without any exam passes despite possessing the kind of sharp brain and articulate delivery that made one of her friends an academic suggest she should take a degree. “But why would I” she says “I’m a businesswoman.” So like many young girls who have experienced foster and residential care she ended up homeless on the streets — and on the game.\r\n\r\nShe is an expert on prostitution having been a street girl a madam (“I ran a string of brothels but I’m not very good at organising things…” was another line delivered with a real cackle) and finally a high class escort. Charlie admits that she is addicted to the oldest profession and still finds herself tempted to this day.\r\n\r\nIf you’re equally tempted to ask why the answer is only partly to do with the physical act. Although Charlie says more than once that she loves sex she admits that it was the need to be validated to be cared for in the most basic manner that initially motivated her. Thatand the money — “as an 18-year-old single mumliving on £30 a week benefits£200 a week seemed a lot of money — but it involved earning a lot of tenners from a lot of men.”\r\n\r\nBeing on the game really meant having her psyche stroked. It also meant being able to send her daughter — whom she won’t name to protect her fledgling TV career — to the top Leeds private school for girls Gateways. “Oh I knew lots of girls who put their children through private education that way.”\r\n\r\nCharlie never knew who her daughter’s father was — she laughs that it could have been one of several men — and this woman made her own way. And in a sense Charlie’s career choice enabled her to realise her abilities as an entrepreneur. “Yes I’m an entrepeneur and ended up with a string of brothels. I was the madam of the North.”\r\n\r\nOne of the reasons that Charlie was successful was that she introduced a new system of payment that was fairer to both clients and girls. “I started a flat rate system in my brothels with half an hour one rate an hour another rate and the man and girl would arrange privately what they wanted to do. This was better than the previous arrangement where certain girls offered only certain things saying I’ll do fish chips and vinegar but not ketchup.”\r\n\r\nLord Sugar might meet his match if Charlie ever entered The Apprentice. She has strong views — “all the entrants were w***kers this year I thought.” — is ferociously bright has a proven business record and would brighten any committee meeting. “It wasn’t just the men either the women on this year’s Apprentice were lamentable.”\r\n\r\nNowadays Charlie wants to use her life experience what she terms her journey to help othersand becomes passionate on the subject. “If 90% of the girls on the street have a background in care homes or in foster care and the Centre for Policy Research says they do then we need positive intervention. We need to go in earlierto teach girls of 10 about self-esteem and about what healthy relationships look like.”\r\n\r\nHer proselytising passion makes sense when you realise what drew Charlie to her early career in vice. As she saysit was about emotions and reward.\r\n\r\n“A man asked me to squeeze my breasts in front of him for £10. I’d squeezed my breasts for boys a lot of times before and got nothing…”\r\n\r\nCharlie’s journey has taken hervia counselling (she has the vocabulary and talks about her “journey”) and an encounter with her birth mother at 13 to a good place and a deal of self-knowledge. But the trauma of meeting Kathleen the mother who was not thought fit to bring her up still makes her wince.\r\n\r\n“We met and I just didn’t like her. She had sandals on although it was winter and dirty toenails and her hair was greasy.” Strangely Charlie did get on with her half-sister Alison and remained in touch for quite a while.\r\n\r\nNow she says that her foster mother did a good job although reading between the lines her values seem a little repressive. “She said to me ‘Well a whore is a whore.’ which was what she thought.\r\n\r\nPolitics is one job she would do well in but when I mention it Charlie smiles knowingly. This is because the small matter of a prison sentence would prevent her becoming the Hon Member for Leeds North anytime soon. “Yes I went to prison. One day after a meltdown I picked up a screwdriver went into the pub and started attacking people.” She adds that fortunately she didn’t kill anybody “but I did take someone’s eye out”.\r\n\r\nThe legal process did not know exactly what to do with Miss Daniels. The second judge who heard the case announced himself to be perplexed saying that because of her work helping police nail a paedophile he would give her the minimum sentence. “So I went to Askham Grange for a year”. While there she won both the Koestler prize for fiction and for poetry.\r\n\r\nThe short story she wrote entitled New Friends in Strange Places ended up in her autobiography Pricelesspublished in 2004 which was described by one critic as one of the most open books he’d read.\r\n\r\nThe author photo on Priceless isn’t quite the same as the face we capture on camera on the Shankill Road and the hotel. It isn’t just a question of seven years having passed it’s partly the fact that Charlie discovered she had a facial tumour last year and has had surgery. She adds that she knows she is lucky but isn’t afraid of death just doesn’t want a prolonged ending.\r\n\r\nSpeaking of her visit to Belfast she says: “Although I didn”t find the street my granny came from when I went into the Shankill to look I definitely felt a strong link with the place. I”ve enjoyed my entire visit here and when I look around I do feel a real sense of belonging.”\r\n\r\nWe were sitting in the Ramada Encore’s Samuel Beckett room — not a lot of laughs there you would think and just when you think you’ve more or less heard it all Charlie summons up her spiritual side.\r\n\r\nShe’s a medium naturally and believes in the Babylonian goddess Ishtar who appropriately deals with love and war.\r\n\r\nThis enthusiasm somehow isn’t surprising. In the battle to improve her life — and prevent other girls following her via lobbying and her www.preventingoffending.co.uk — Charlie is a fierce fighter and on love well she’s a bit of an expert.\r\n\r\nFor details of Charlie”s campaign against prostitution go to www.preventoffending.co.uk . Priceless my journey through a life of vice by Charlie DanielsHodder Headline\r\n\r\nThe oldest profession laid bare\r\n\r\nThe woman behind the Diary of a London Call Girl blog — started in 2003 and written under the nom de plume Belle de Jour was Dr Brooke Magnantia Bristol University research scientist who worked as a £300-an-hour escort to fund her doctorate. She said “I think it’s like many other jobs — Belle wasn’t me but the more confident part of me.”\r\nBecause she was bored with her middle-class life and job American author Dolores Frenchthen 27 became a prostitute. In My Life as a Prostitute she describes the clients she served in Atlanta and abroad including a period in Puerto Rican brothels. She recounts the story of how she became wealthy on the back (so to speak) of her job with humorous and occasionally sordid detail. She now campaigns for prostitutes’ rights.\r\nIn Kinky Confessions Of A Working Girl (Penguin)Miss S revealed her career as “one of London’s top five escorts”. Describing her first year in the brothel she joined at 21 it follows her as she became a madam and ran her own business. Her editor said: “This is her chosen career — she does it because she loves it and her attitude to sex is empoweringfun and refreshing.”\r\n\r\n<a href=”http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/woman/life/charlie-daniels-my-life-on-the-streets-28684495.html” title=”Read the full article online here” target=”_blank”></a>\r\n’