WITH long glossy hair and a smile that looks almost angelic, Lily Phillips comes across as an articulate, self-possessed young woman.
Casually dressed for our chat, there is no outward hint that this bubbly, engaging and genuinely funny 23-year-old Brit makes her living from sex.
But it is a “career” which has brought her phenomenal success with a reported £2million in the bank and eight people - including a PA and security guards - on her payroll.
Brimming with excitement, she tells me how she is set to tread the red carpet in the US, where she is up for her first “porn gong”, in the independent female creator category at the Adult Video News awards.
OnlyFans star Lily, from Denby, Derbys, appears to be the picture of happiness.
Yet one of the saddest things I’ve ever watched was the recent YouTube documentary which followed the OnlyFans star’s bid to have sex with 100 men in 24 hours.
After the bedroom marathon - which saw men flying from as far away as Switzerland to line up for their five minute slot - she tearfully admitted the process had become “robotic”.
And she revealed she had to “disassociate” herself from the acts she was performing until she nailed a total of 101 men - one more than she had planned.
This week, Lily was ‘outdone’ by the infamous Bonnie Blue, who claims to have had sex with 1057 men in 12 hours - or one every 41 seconds.
But what makes these bright, attractive young women want to enter an increasingly extreme competition that debases women everywhere?
As a mother of a daughter in her 20s, I was horrified by what I saw in Lily’s documentary - but I was also interested to meet her and discover what has led her to this point.
A middle-class girl, with loving parents and a comfortable upbringing in the village of Denby, Derbyshire, Lily once dreamed of owning a wedding dress shop but instead went to Sheffield University to study nutrition.
After “sleeping around” at uni, she decided to monetise her sexuality and joined OnlyFans, expecting to make “a couple of hundred” - but raked in £11,000 in the first month before dropping out to concentrate on her adult content.
“I was being a sluzza anyway so I might as well make some money out of it,” she says, in the documentary.
Tellingly she also reveals she “wanted to wait until marriage at one point. I used to think it was a real special thing but as soon as I actually did it I realised it wasn’t special and also that I really enjoy it and want to do it way more.”
Chatting to Lily in person, she comes across as a confident, bright and engaging young woman who insists she loves her “job” and has no regrets.
“This career has given me the life I've always dreamed of,” she says, revealing she currently earns “six figure sums” every month and charges £300 for a one to one video lasting five minutes.
Living in a luxury flat in West London she is planning to splash out on a mansion in Derbyshire and admits her budget is around £1.5m.
All suggestions that her extreme sexual content might take its mental toll are dismissed with Lily’s customary positivity as she insists: “People think I’m mad but I actually love it”.
Ahead of the 100 man stunt, filmed in a London Airbnb, the applicants were tested for STIs and had to prove they were over 18.
But when several got cold feet, last minute replacements were drafted in, untested - although Lily took her own precautions.
“I wore protection with all of them,” she tells me. “I'm on PrEP ((Pre-exposure prophylaxis which reduces the risk of getting HIV) and I was also taking antibiotics literally at the time of doing it, to be as protected as possible,” she says.
“STI’s are always a worry but it is every time you have sex with anyone.”
Mentally, she says she needed no preparation.
“I'm in the adult industry and I think you have to be mentally strong to be in that anyway,” she says. “Sleeping with a lot of men wasn't new to me so I didn't do anything to mentally prepare.
“My biggest fears were guys not showing up or them not having a good time.”
Final scenes in the documentary show a slightly different story to the positive spin Lily puts on the 24 hour marathon.
Filthy and exhausted, she breaks down in floods of tears, as she reveals she felt pressure to “give them a good time” because “some have travelled so far”.
“Sometimes it just felt so robotic,” she adds. “When we were getting on a bit (through the numbers) I had like a routine of how we were going to do this – you disassociate and it’s not like normal sex at all.
"In my head right now I can think of five, six… ten guys that I remember and that’s it, If I didn’t have the videos I wouldn’t have known I’d done 100.”
She also revealed some complained that they’d only had two minutes when they were promised five, adding: “Obviously that makes me feel so bad.”
Although her obvious distress is hard to watch, Lily once again dismisses the mental impact and insists she was “happy” with her dubious achievement.
“I think you can have a tough day at work and it doesn't mean you hate your job or you're being coerced into anything,” she says. “It just means it was a tough day.
“When I look back on the day I’m happy. I achieved my goal so I was chuffed about that.”
She admits she was surprised by the backlash and concern for her wellbeing that the documentary spawned, adding: “I think a lot of people thought I was being trafficked or some deeper issues are going on, which just isn't the case.”
Alarmingly, she finished the documentary with a vow to bed 1,000 in 24 hours, which she originally planned to stage in the US but has now postponed because of threats and fears of being arrested and deported.
While fellow Derbyshire OnlyFans star Bonnie Blue is now claiming the “World record” with 1057, Lily says she is not put off.
“I respect it, that's hard work, so congratulations to her,” she says. “I don't think there's competition and I don’t feel I now have to do 1058. I feel like there's enough men in this world to f*** us both.”
In the meantime, Lily proudly reveals her next big “challenge” - which is far too disturbing to describe here and leaves me worrying for her safety even more.
I think you can have a tough day at work and it doesn't mean you hate your job or you're being coerced into anything. It just means it was a tough day.
Lily Phillips
The OnlyFans star - whose subscribers leapt from 36,000 to 88,000 after the documentary was released - is reluctant to talk about parents Lindsay and Emma as she is, quite rightly, keen to protect them from any backlash caused by her content.
She has previously said they are “supportive” but “apprehensive” about her work, although she admitted in the documentary “I don’t think they need to know every detail.”
But as I struggle to understand how a girl brought up in such a stable family allows herself to be “ran through” by 100 men in a day, we get to the heart of a modern day issue - when she admits she was accessing porn from the age of 11.
On the suggestion that may have coloured her view of sex she replies: “It's a hard question, because all I've ever known is to be able to access porn easily.
“I wouldn't know if it had an effect on me because I've never experienced not being able to access porn.
“I've always been an advocate of making porn sites less accessible or at least needing a form of ID, because I hate to think of people underage watching my videos.”
I feel like I'm one of a very small percentage of women who would enjoy this kind of activity... But I'm not responsible for what men do and how they think.
Lily Phillips
In a flash of self-awareness, she also admits she is “part of the problem” when it comes to men’s unrealistic expectations of women in the bedroom.
“It’s so hard because doing something extreme like this is not normal,” she says. “I think guys are going to expect girls to be as ‘sl***y’ as me and sleep with that many guys and do stuff like that - but that isn’t real life.
“It’s my fantasy but I’m not helping the situation.”
She tells me: “I really try to make clear that what I do is extreme and I do it because I enjoy it. I feel like I'm one of a very small percentage of women who would enjoy this kind of activity and I just try to be as honest with people as possible about that. But I'm not responsible for what men do and how they think.”
As a mum, it depresses me that girls growing up will be influenced by the likes of Lily and Bonnie, and see the exploitation of their bodies as a way to make a fast buck.
But talking to Lily also made me want to save her from herself - and the way she may feel about herself in ten or twenty years time.
Unsurprisingly, Lily is blase about future fallout.
“I've never been scared or thought about anything like that,” she says. “I just think what I do now is what I enjoy and I'm doing it.
“I'm quite an ‘in the moment’ person, and I don't know how I’ll feel in 10 years so there's no point in trying to base my life on myself in 10 years time.”
By Emma Kenny, psychologist
Lily describes being unfazed by people’s concerns and rejects the notion that her behaviour may be the result of deeper issues. However, her admissions in a recent YouTube documentary, where she tearfully explained how “robotic” she felt, and how she had to “disassociate” just to get through the event, suggest that she’s grappling with more internal conflict than she may realise.
When an individual’s first introduction to intimacy is through explicit or performance-based content, it can distort what “healthy” or “enjoyable” intimacy looks like. Over time, a person may come to equate sexual extremes with validation or empowerment, without fully considering the emotional toll.
Lily herself acknowledges that only a handful of the men from her marathon stand out in her memory, a sign of how disconnected she felt from her own experience. Such dissociation can be a psychological safety mechanism, one that might help her endure in the short term, but could contribute to shame, anxiety, or identity confusion down the line.
The broader worry is that younger people see Lily’s financial success and fame and view extreme sexual behaviour as a fast track to attention and monetary gain.
Bonnie Blue’s claim of sleeping with 1,057 men in 12 hours only fuels this disturbing sense of competition. In reality, both women and men are hurt when sex is reduced to a contest, as it reinforces unrealistic expectations and can normalise objectifying behaviour.
While Lily, Bonnie and others like them might argue that they’re simply exercising personal freedom, the bigger picture is more complex. Deep emotional needs, traumatic experiences, and social pressures can all be at play, creating a vicious cycle that confuses genuine self-expression with self-exploitation.
As Lily looks ahead, it’s understandable that she insists she has no regrets and doesn’t anticipate the emotional consequences of her choices.
Yet self-perception can shift dramatically over time, and what feels liberating now could weigh heavily on her sense of worth in the years to come. For individuals like Lily, genuine support, through therapy, self-reflection and a reexamination of what truly brings fulfilment, may help untangle the complicated reasons behind these extreme acts.
