The Dolly Parlour in Greenwich, South London, is no normal brothel - while the whole venture may appear unseemly, experts predict it is the cutting edge of a sexual revolution
IT is a freezing Friday morning, but the brothel I’m standing outside of is doing a brisk trade.
Everyone wants to spend some, ahem, quality time with its much-talked-about girls.
After furtively ringing the buzzer, I’m ushered inside and led upstairs by the madam.
I hand over a fist of cash and am directed to a bedroom where voluptuous Jenny is waiting for me.
She is perched on the end of the bed in delicate lingerie, arms outstretched, welcoming me in.
I slide into the room, shutting the door. Jenny does not say a word - because she can't.
The Dolly Parlour in Greenwich, South London, is no normal brothel. The clue is in the name: The girls are all dolls.
Jenny, a 5ft 4in D-cup, is one of two life-like models at the UK’s first ever sex doll brothel.
The operation, run by a brother and sister, charges clients £75 for an hour of silicone sex. And business is booming.
Indeed, getting my noon appointment wasn't easy. Thursday was fully booked, and Friday night? Forget it.
The whole venture may appear unseemly.
But experts predict it is the cutting edge of a sexual revolution.
Academics reckon sex dolls will soon be a major attraction in brothels all over the world — and could even help make the trade safer and combat human trafficking.
Whatever the future holds, 2018 is certainly being seen as the year the sex doll got serious — as part of a multi-billion-pound sex toy industry.
One manufacturer, RealDoll, shifts 400 of them per year.
At The Dolly Parlour they have two models, both life-size and made of plastic.
Blonde Britney and brunette Jenny are typically dressed in lingerie but punters can pay an extra £20 for other outfits.
The website says customers can expect an experience with no limits that will fulfil your wildest fantasy.
The parlour is open from 10.30am until late and will take bookings from 30 minutes to two-hour. Half an hour with one doll will set you back £50, while two hours costs £130.
The parlour’s madam tells me her brother is the business brains behind the brothel.
Her role is to let the punters into the terraced block of flats and she also has the grim job of cleaning the dolls between sessions.
The Dolly Parlour has been open for six weeks and already has a few regulars.
The girls, which can be positioned in any pose you like, greet you in a small double bedroom in a gloomy top-floor flat. There is also a cold, bare kitchen with a bin bag in one corner and a change of clothes for the dolls scattered across the work surface.
I ask the madam if there are any ground rules.
She replies: “So long as you pay and you leave within the time limit, you can do whatever you want.”
I hand her £50 for half an hour and am directed to a door.
Seeing Jenny comes as a shock.
This obviously plastic mannequin is more like horror movie puppet Chucky than Belle de Jour.
Glassy-eyed Jenny — retail price £1,700 — is made of a soft, rubber-like material squishy to the touch.
It reminds me of the Stretch Armstrong action figure I played with as a child.
The cramped room, which stinks of latex, just has a bed, with a pink fitted sheet and two pillows.
There is no duvet. I guess people do not want to cuddle up and spoon with Jenny after they have finished.
On the side is a small towel with two condoms on top. Punters are asked to use them for hygiene reasons.
I try moving Jenny so I can take pictures for this article but she is surprisingly heavy.
Her limbs can be moved thanks to her bendy skeleton — and they have been left in a mangled state.
Her digits are sticking out at odd angles like she has lost a fight with a piece of agricultural equipment.
At one point her wig pops off.
I do not think I have felt so embarrassed in front of a woman since secondary school.
It is an utterly depressing scene. Can this really be someone’s idea of kinky fun?
The Dolly Parlour, which did not respond to requests to comment, may well be Britain’s first sex doll brothel but it is not a world first.
Operating at a secret location in Barcelona, Lumidolls has a range of sex dolls — but its ones are robotic.
The brothel is said to be popular with stag dos from the UK. Another establishment opened in Paris in January, and Denmark also has one.
Artificial intelligence researcher David Levy, who has predicted that humans will fall in love and even marry robots by 2050, has said: “I don’t see that anybody can possibly be harmed by people having sex with robots, so I think that the idea of a robot brothel should . . . probably be encouraged.”
He added: “The advent of sex robots will probably reduce the popularity of having sex with a sex worker.
“And if it’s going to have that effect, it will also reduce sex trafficking.”
But many people remain appalled at these sex trade innovations.
Opponents argue that the dolls only further the objectification of women and lead to darker fantasies being indulged.
Kathleen Richardson is professor of ethics and culture of robots and AI at De Montfort University in Leicester. She is also the founder of the Campaign Against Sex Robots.
When I tell her about the brothel I have visited, she says: “I think this London parlour is really disturbing. It makes people think women are objects.
“I’ve spoken to someone in Denmark who said men are going to these places and hitting the dolls.
“In the past most people would develop their tastes through relationships, finding out what they, and others, like.
“Now because of the rise of inanimate dolls and pornography people are having less sex.
“We are creating a very dangerous world, where people develop damaging sexual tastes outside of a normal relationship.
"They are not told their violent behaviour is wrong, and it could lead to them escalating things and hurting real people in the future.”
Even some of the designers behind the robots have questioned whether they could be a legitimate replacement for sex workers.
Roboticist Sergi Santos founded the sex doll company Synthea Amatus in Barcelona.
He believes that people should have intimate relationships with just a single robot and not use several ones at brothels.
He says: “I am trying to create something which the user can bond with. In a prostitute I don’t understand what this bond would be good for.”
And that, for me, is where this peculiar and disturbing service fails.
My encounter with Jenny is as far removed from real human contact as it is possible to get.
Sex has never been further from my mind — so I politely make my excuses and leave.
LEGALLY, it is an offence for a person to keep or manage a brothel, writes Neil Brown, an internet, telecoms and technology lawyer with Decoded:Legal.
It is also an offence for landlords to let their premises be used as a brothel.
But is it a “brothel” if the sex workers are dolls or robots?
According to the law, a brothel is “a place where people of opposite sexes are allowed to resort for illicit intercourse, whether the women are common prostitutes or not”.
This was extended in 1956 to cover premises which are “resorted to for the purpose of lewd homosexual practices”.
It is unlikely that premises for sex between a person and a doll or robot would fall foul of either of these legal descriptions.
