I ran a sexy chat line while pregnant, it was hideously depressing

‘I’d get hundreds of calls each day, earning 12p a minute’ (Picture: Metro)

‘Hello Melissa, it’s your chicken!’

Oh joy, I thought, my eyes theatrically rolling skywards. ‘Ooh, hello…. I’m going to chase you round the back garden with a chopping knife, yes I am. Then cut your little head off,’ I replied in most sultry voice, given the circumstances.

‘Oh, but don’t you feel sorry for me – I thought I was your pet?’ the man pleaded.

‘Pet, pah!  I’ve just been fattening you up for my Sunday dinner. Once your head is chopped off and you’ve stopped squawking I shall pluck out all your feathers, baste your flesh and pop you in the oven to turn you crispy and brown…’

A vegetarian, I paused to gag, then continued, ‘before opening a delicious Chablis and laying the table in readiness. I will enjoy every morsel of your tender little body. What do you think of that, my chicken? Nom nom nom!’

Silence. He’d hung up. 

When I was pregnant in 2000 and became too big to strip, I got a job on a sex phone line, working from home for six months. Men would ring up all day long, asking me to listen to their fantasies or just talk dirty to them.

Melissa spent six months running her chat line (Picture: Getty Images)

It didn’t take long before I’d got so good at at engaging my mouth but not my brain, that I could watch telly, do crosswords or read magazines while simultaneously whispering the words: wet, juicy, swollen, suck, tickle, in assorted permutations.

90% of the time I didn’t have to do any actual thinking, which meant I rather resented the oddballs, like chicken man, who wanted something out of the ordinary.

I’d get hundreds of calls each day, earning 12p a minute from 8am to 8pm, or 16p a minute overnight. I’d usually do the late shift because I had a mortgage to pay and no partner to help out after we’d split when I was just 12 weeks pregnant. Plus, I was trying to save for the future.

Sometimes, my throat would grow sore from all the earnest ecstatic screaming the men demanded – but most of them were dull, dull, dull.

I’d sit by the phone for 13 hours straight and most callers were ‘one minute w**kers’ who said little, staying on the line just long enough to get the job done and slamming the phone down at the exact point of orgasm.

Indeed, I set myself up with quite a sound department over the months, including a bottle of water and a bucket for the water sports devotees; a cosy sleeping bag, whose zip doubled as my sexy thigh high boots; a whip to crack, and a chain to rattle.

Melissa would never go back to doing the ‘soul destroying’ chat lines again (Picture: Natasha Pszenicki)

As I used my landline, I got a great long extension cord so I could clean the house while I moaned about how desperately horny I felt. ‘Mmmm, I’m lying here all alone, nearly naked…’ I’d whisper, in my stained, sweaty dressing gown, while scrubbing a skirting board.

The callers never knew my actual number as they went through a switchboard which described the girls who were available. Before they men were patched through I’d get a recorded message saying what they wanted in vague terms – kinky, hard, romantic, soft – and then we would be connected.

I didn’t suffer much from morning sickness, but on the rare occasions I felt a bit queasy, you could guarantee those were the times the weirdos would be in touch, as if they could sense my discomfort.

Disturbingly one liked to discuss public hangings, while another liked to stick a skewer down his urethra, then rub his old fellow with sandpaper, with a pair of his sister’s pants in his mouth.

Why men called these chat lines was always an utter mystery to me. I couldn’t ever fathom why they would think hearing a clearly bored woman talk nonsense would improve their w**k. Especially as more than half would be utterly silent and not even give me any clues at all what they were after.

Most men barely spoke, instead masturbating before hanging up (Picture: Getty Images)

What I do know, is that for a few, the anonymity gave them the courage to express their deepest desires.

Two weeks before I gave birth my phone ringer broke, small wonder, and I missed a hundred calls, which meant an automatic dismissal.

I can’t say I was that upset – I had started to worry what my baby’s first words might be. Not to mention it was the most hideous, depressing, soul-destroying job I’ve ever had – I’d sooner douche with a hedgehog than go back to it.

Ten days after the birth I got back into stripping, still with my stitches in, one knocker three sizes bigger than the other. 

But that, dear reader, is another story.

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