What I learned about men by working on a “babe channel”

The following is written by sports presenter and writer Amy Christophers – pictured above.

It's no secret to those who know me that I had another life before I do what I do now – sports presenting and writing, but for those who are unaware, I spent 10 years as a glamour model under an alias.

I smashed every target I set myself, I was on the pages of lad mags around the world, featured as a page three girl, and also picked up a few awards and pageant titles along the way. But something I've majorly played down is my "babe channel" life, I can't say which one I worked for, but it was the one that probably first comes to mind. As a well known glamour model you would be pushed into doing the channels by your agent, as you would attract the viewers and callers. We would all generally do the daytime shows (girl next door types), some went onto nights but it's something I didn't want to do – as I knew I wanted to get into serious presenting afterwards. I learned a lot from working on babe channels, some good, some bad. But given that most of my interaction was with men, I got one hell of an insight into the male psyche.

We never had a script...

It was down to each individual woman – but we had set guidelines of which direction to stir the convo with our producers shouting remember girls 'flirty not dirty' and a motto being 'we aim to tease not please'. I've never been a people pleaser anyway, I've always been strong minded and done things how I want to do them. So when our 'hello' guidelines would tell us to say "oh and why did you call me today then?", I'd ask this question and get the usual reply: "well you just looked so sexy I couldn't resist." But after a little bit of massaging their ego to hook them onto my call, I'd then ask, "so seriously why are you calling?". Some were genuinely just lonely, maybe they had outlived their wives so wanted the companionship, others were drunk at home with their mates and would be flicking through and recognise you from page three of their favourite lads mag. They'd just want to brag to their mates that they'd spoken to you or just be... well, annoying, to be honest. Then you'd have a certain group of guys who were just obsessed with the babe channel world, the type who would buy a camera and set up a profile on model sites to shoot babe channel girls. They would call up and know every single shoot you've ever done, who all your model best mates were and where you liked to hang out. I was always quite straight down the line when I spoke to callers, I'd bullshit some of the babe channel fans, but mostly I had my regulars who I soon became like a personal therapist for. And to be honest I felt good helping them. Some had social anxiety, others were 40-year-old virgins who had never kissed a girl, an awful lot of them just had no self confidence so I helped them with this and gave them tips on talking to women, I'd often ask them what their type was, to which they would reply, "you", which leads me nicely to the main thing I learned. Many men have really unrealistic expectations and standards for women, and I do feel like I'm partly to blame for glamourising it. These men that watched the babe channels then expected to find a girl like that in real life, when in fact even we weren't like that in real life at all. I never wore that much make up going out, and, er, nope... never wore leather skin tight thigh-high boots on a night out. And I definitely didn't wear pvc or rubber day-to-day! I'm probably the most unglamorous person out there. It was a job, you turned it on for work - an illusion, a facade, a fantasy. I spoke to hundreds of bored, married men who just wanted a cheap (actually not that cheap at £2.50 p/m) thrill, men who felt neglected by their wives. When I'd poke into this a little more, some would hang up, some would open up and say "well, we don't have much of a sex life anymore", "we've got children", or "she works long hours", "I hardly see her with our busy schedules". The normal day to day stresses of life, nothing out of the ordinary. But I would then ask when the last time was they did something nice for their wives like take her for dinner, a show or even just the cinema. The answers were all pretty much the same... "ah I don't bother with all that now" or "when you've been married as long as we have" etc. I found this so annoying. When men stop making the effort women can go off sex because they don't feel sexy - we feel undesired. A little appreciation and effort goes a long way. I used to tell them to run their girlfriend or wife a bath, light some candles, or buy her some flowers. You don't need to spend money on expensive gifts for the passion to come back. Sure enough, they would call and tell me what a wonderful evening or week it's been and how they're getting on so much better. Trouble was, then I would lose my callers because I'd sorted out their problems. Men seem to just want a play thing if they have an affair, and will very rarely end a marriage because of it; well by their own choice anyway... And they seem to have no emotional attachment to their mistresses, it's mainly just about the thrill and the sex and about how good it makes them feel. Whereas with women who cheat it's normally because of the emotional absence in their own relationship. They look elsewhere for that feeling of comfort and passion. Most affairs started by women seem to end in a divorce because they want to leave the unhappy marriage. From speaking to so many men over the years, it seems like they can be married unhappy or happy. Men feel just as insecure about their bodies as women. I used to have a lot of 'slaves' call up who would say they were not worthy and were ugly and they wanted me to humiliate them. This was all new to me when I started. A lot of men would ask what my type was, and say they're a little out of shape and do women care about that? And pretty much most of the callers would ask about dick size and whether or not it matters. I used to get a lot of guys who had read 'The Game' and used the negging effect on woman which now seems to form a large part of online troll culture. They either start being a complete tool from the off, or they start off lovely and then turn nasty after rejection. I've heard the phrase "fuck off you're a slag anyway" more times than I care to remember. I can tell you the technique doesn't work at all.