On paper, Kirie Redfield is every inch the respectable businesswoman. She runs her own limited company and she pays VAT every quarter.
Every week she sends her books to her accountant to make sure all her tax affairs are in order.
It’s only the nature of her business that might make the men at Revenue and Customs look twice.
Kirie’s company comes under the banner ‘adult modelling’ although in real terms it’s a bit more than that: she’s a prostitute – she prefers the word escort – plying her trade from a motor home in which she travels all over the country, while her driver-turned- ‘business partner’ sits in the front coordinating her next appointments via her website.
All sorts are on offer too: as she proudly proclaims on her site her services range from the ‘totally perverse’ to ‘bareback & water sports’ and pretty much everything else in between.
And make no mistake – she’s completely unapologetic about it too.
“I do what I do because I love it,” she insists. “I’ve got nothing to hide – I’m not ashamed of what I do. I love the fact that I can use my body to make money.”
Of course, Kirie is one of thousands of women in the UK earning an income from her silicone enhanced curves – but probably one of the only ones who is officially registered with Companies House, the government’s company registration agency.
Her unconventional business came to light in the Channel 4 series 24 Hours in Police Custody.
Kirie – who says she is in her thirties – was unwittingly caught up in a blackmail scam when a serving police officer attempted to extort money from one of the punters who had visited her van while it was parked on an industrial estate in Luton.
The first Kirie knew of it was when a detective arrived at her home in Whitby, Yorkshire, to question her about her potential involvement.
“I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I told him I was clean as a whistle and I could prove it.
“When he asked me if I could remember the punter I had to tell him I can’t remember most of the people I see – I can see up to 30 men a day and to be honest I forget what they look like.”
It’s typical of the matter of fact approach Kirie brings to her business.
Born and bred in Yorkshire, the daughter of a single mother, she had a conventional upbringing and did well in her school exams but after initially training as a nurse – not to mention spending some time working in a factory making chess pieces – she turned to sex work in her mid-twenties.
“I knew people that ran sex parties and I thought ‘I could do that’. I tried it, loved it and knew I could make money,” she recalls.
“It was such a different kind of life. I was always used to getting attention I picked up on that and I enjoyed the attention.”
She quickly moved into the porn business, making films in Germany, which she claims is the “best” porn in the world. “I was on the cover of a lot of magazines and DVDs there,” she boasts.
She also did escort work as a sideline gig but while she insists she’s always worked legitimately and paid her taxes, two years ago she decided to formalise her affairs further and set up a limited company.
“I knew I wanted to do it properly,” she says. “A friend of mine had a site on the internet advertising her services but she was moving abroad so I took her profile and I put all my stuff on there and it went from there.
“I get paid in cash, but everything I get paid goes in a book and at the end of the week I take it to my accountant and he works everything out.”
And while she won’t be drawn into exactly how much she makes, she confirms that she earns “a very healthy income”.
“It’s a lot more than when I was making chess pieces, a hell of a lot more.”
Still, she has to put the hours in, touring the country for at least three days a week.
“I got sick of hotels which is why I got the van – it gives me a lot of flexibility,” she says.
That’s one way of putting it: when we chat she is in the Derbyshire dales on the way home from a “busy time” in Birmingham, taking a day off before heading to Newcastle.
“It usually works as three days on four days off to recover as they’re long days,” she says.
On average her punters range from thirty something to fifty-somethings and they want anything from “a quickie” to something more exotic.
“I offer a whole range of services – nothing phases me really although there are things I won’t do – I won’t see anyone under 21, I won’t do any rough stuff and I won’t do animals,” she says.
Surprisingly given the dangers inherent in prostitution Kirie insists she’s never had any difficult encounters with her punters.
“I’ve never had anything dodgy,” she says. “All the men have been respectful and never tried anything out of order.”
It helps that she has a degree of protection in the form of her male driver and business partner, who is sat just feet away whenever she meets clients, while the fact she works out of a van means that none of her customers know her home address.
“I never ask their names, I’m not interested. A lot of them are married – I can see their wedding rings but it’s not always what people think it is.
“A lot of the people I see are lonely, they just want company. “Some just want to do things their wives won’t do.
“People in my line of work don’t want to get husbands to cheat on their wives – the way I see it, it’s up to the men what they choose to do.”
Besides, her punters are not the only ones who are married: six years ago Kirie got hitched to a man who doesn’t work in the sex industry.
“He’s not in that world at all – he’s a music composer for video games,” she says.
“I met him when I was 25 and, although he wasn’t happy when he realised what I did for a living, I made it clear that this was who I was and if he wanted to be with me he had to accept it.”
Today the couple share their home with two dogs and eleven rescue cats.
“I love animals so I get a kick out of the fact that my work helps me give a lot of money to animal charities,” Kirie says.
“My husband understands how important that is to me, although we don’t talk about what I do.
“To be honest he blanks a lot of it out. His friends know and some of them have seen my website but they are all very respectful about it.”
Estranged from her own family, she says her handful of friends are also aware of her trade.
“I keep myself to myself so I don’t talk to many people,” she says. “It’s not that I’m ashamed, far from it – I’m not doing anything wrong.”
It’s a statement confirmed by the police officers in 24 Hours in Police Custody who discuss the fact that Kirie isn’t doing anything illegal: “What she does with her body is her own business” is how one of them puts it.
Of course, some people will still judge her for her unorthodox line of work, however much she gives to the taxman.
“I’d tell them to get a life,” says Kirie. “People can say what they want but I’m doing what makes me happy.
“There are people out there doing a lot worse than what happens in the back of my van.”
And what’s more she intends to carry on working for as long as she can. “I will do this job as long as people want my services,” she says.
