The first time Sarah Symonds sold herself for sex, she left a family party to do it.

Just 22 and newly arrived in Abu Dhabi, she had become intoxicated by a world that seemed unimaginably glamorous compared with the one she had left behind in South Wales – and it was a world in which money talked.

So, shocking as it may sound, when a friend suggested that she could cash in on her blue-eyed good looks, Sarah saw it as nothing more than the kind of ordinary transaction that seemed to underpin life in this then burgeoning desert city.

Her first client was a young Arab man who had spotted her at a hotel bar and was prepared to pay the ‘going rate’ of around £400.

After slipping away from a gathering hosted by her cousin, Sarah took the man to her apartment, pocketed the money... and returned to the party, before heading out to a nightclub to celebrate her windfall. ‘That was how little I made of it all at the time,’ she recalls.

‘I had no concept that I had just degraded myself, put myself in danger and set myself on a life-changing trajectory.’

It would take more than three decades for that understanding to arrive. Because Sarah, now 56, did not stop at that first client. Within months she was working regularly as an escort and, over the next decade, would sleep with hundreds of men for money, both in the Middle East and back in London.

‘At the height of my escort work there was nothing I hadn’t done or wouldn’t do,’ she says now. ‘Nothing shocked me. I had seen and heard it all and done most of it.

Sarah Symonds admits years of escorting in the Middle East and the UK left her feeling dehumanised and lost

I just wish I could have seen the long-term damage on so many levels, Sarah says. After being treated as a commodity, I saw it as the norm

‘I told myself I was in charge, but the reality was it left me feeling dehumanised and lost.’

It is a startling, sad admission, made here publicly for the first time and driven, she says, by her profound horror at the burgeoning popularity of subscription platforms such as OnlyFans and other online content creation forums.

‘So many young women think that selling sex online is no big deal, that it’s easy money,’ she says. ‘But I am here to tell them that, whatever their assumptions, it’s a slippery slope that warps your life for years to come.’

Indeed, Sarah knows more than anyone just how defining such early life choices can be.

Because after leaving Abu Dhabi she would become famous for something else entirely; in the early 2000s, she became one of Britain’s most notorious ‘other women’, claiming to have had affairs with politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with whom she alleged she had conducted a seven-year affair.

Ramsay has always denied the affair, and her claims have never been substantiated. Archer has never publicly commented on her claims.

Speaking out saw her branded a marriage-wrecker, but for a while she appeared to revel in her notoriety as a ‘professional mistress’, talking openly about infidelity and even writing a ‘handbook’ for other mistresses.

Only now, Sarah says, does she fully understand the connection between the young woman who once sold sex to strangers and the older woman who, she claims, repeatedly accepted the role of mistress.

Sarah confesses the money she earned from escorting became a double-edged sword as the more she spent the more she needed

Today, she believes those early experiences profoundly altered her understanding of sex, relationships and, most damagingly of all, her own worth.

‘I just wish I could have seen the long-term damage on so many levels,’ she says. ‘After being treated as a commodity, I saw it as the norm.

‘My story is a cautionary tale for other young women who, like me, can get drawn into what looks like a glamorous life only to find it is a slippery slope.

‘For me, it has led to a lifetime of consequences – not being able to hold down a relationship, crippling anxiety, depression and alcohol dependency.

‘I’m not seeking sympathy. I just hope I can save somebody else’s daughter from being lured down the same path.’

Now back in Newport, South Wales, Sarah’s life could scarcely be further from the one she once led. She lives quietly in what was once the family home and cares for her elderly father. Her mother died earlier this year.

Gone are the sports cars, designer clothes and late-night cocktails in expensive hotels. Her most beloved companions these days are her five rescue dogs. ‘I’ve realised that this is the real me,’ she says.

Wind back the clock to the early 1990s, however, and the young Sarah was desperate for something more.

Having had a relatively sheltered upbringing in Wales, Sarah says living in Abu Dhabi was like being on a different planet

The younger of two siblings, she describes herself as a naive young woman who could scarcely believe her eyes when, aged 22, she travelled to Abu Dhabi in 1992 to stay with a cousin who had moved there for work.

‘It was like being on a different planet,’ she says. ‘What struck me was how in the UK we all used to save up for a year for a week’s holiday, but over there that lifestyle was every day.’

There was another intoxicating novelty: male attention. ‘I stood out there. People told me I was pretty, that I had lovely eyes. For a frumpy girl from Newport, it made me feel good about myself.’

Then, during a night out at one of the city’s famous Ladies’ Nights – in which female guests received unlimited free drinks – she was approached by a man who asked if she would be interested in working as a sales executive for a leading hotel chain.

Visiting his office the following morning, she walked past the glittering hotel pool and along the boardwalk towards the sea. ‘I remember thinking, “This is paradise. This could be my life.”’

She was offered the job, to which she was committed for two years as her employers had taken her passport – standard practice at the time.

It was to prove the start of a life far removed from her relatively sheltered upbringing in Wales.

‘I came from a pretty conservative background. I’d had two or three boyfriends and that was it. Suddenly, I was exposed to more alcohol and more men than ever before in my life,’ she recalls.

There were one-night stands – lots of them. ‘Men seemed to be everywhere: propositioning me during sales calls and even leaving telephone numbers tucked beneath the windscreen wipers of my car,’ she says. ‘At first, it was flattering.’

Meanwhile, some of the men she encountered appeared to assume that sex was part of almost any transaction. Even a man who repaired some of her jewellery expected something in return.

‘It made my blood boil,’ she says. ‘But, looking back, I think it also set me on the path to escorting. There was this sense of playing these men at their own game.’

She pauses. ‘I can see now that those first few months in Abu Dhabi were pivotal for me and set a precedent without my knowing it. They knocked my moral compass completely out of kilter.’

And so, when a male friend suggested that, if she was sleeping with men anyway, she ‘might as well make some money’, the proposition no longer seemed as extraordinary as it once might.

‘My values were already so skewed by then that it didn’t seem outrageous,’ she recalls.

That first £400 encounter followed – and then another. Before long, fuelled by her friend’s contacts, Sarah was selling sex on a regular basis alongside her day job.

On the surface, at least, her life looked extraordinarily glamorous. ‘I would be taken to all-night parties on yachts or villas in the desert, then driven back to Abu Dhabi. I was surviving on very little sleep, high adrenaline and money in envelopes,’ she says.

‘On the one hand I felt empowered and in charge, but there were plenty of times when I had to choke down feelings of self-loathing. I remember one man was so revolting I had to turn away from him while we were doing it so he wouldn’t see the tears running down my face and hear the stifled sobs. Now, it makes me feel angry.

‘But throughout it all I kept persuading myself that at least I was getting something out of it.’

There was danger, too, much of which she simply trained herself not to think about.

‘There were a couple of times I felt really frightened,’ she says quietly. ‘At one point I was with the son of a wealthy Arab, and he was driving along one of the main roads with a crystal glass of whisky. Then he pulled up his trouser leg and I saw he had a knife in his sock.

‘Another time I was on a boat with a man who got very aggressive. Luckily, I was able to get away, but I did feel vulnerable.’

Throughout, the money kept coming. There was enough to buy a car and a mobile phone – still a considerable luxury at the time – and if payment wasn’t in cash, there were gifts and favours.

‘As I got more savvy, I would negotiate. It could be an apartment for two weeks when my parents came to stay, or trips.’

Yet the money was gone almost as quickly as it arrived, splurged on designer goods and clothes. ‘It became a double-edged sword,’ she says. ‘The more you spent, the more you needed.’

If those around Sarah realised what was happening, nobody confronted her, though she suspects her parents may have been aware of what was going on.

‘While we have never spoken about it, I’m convinced that on some level they knew,’ she says. ‘I still blame certain family members for not stepping in, but they were enjoying the spoils of my earnings.’

Sarah stayed in the Middle East for four years, including a stint working in Dubai, returning to the UK in 1996. ‘I was ready for a change,’ she says.

Changing countries, however, did not mean leaving her other life behind entirely.

By 1999, and now working with a London hotel chain, Sarah was undertaking sex work again, often with men she had known in the Middle East who travelled regularly to Britain and continued to contact her.

‘I would often go in my lunch hour to see clients at neighbouring hotels. After work, I would hang out with rich Arabs until three or four in the morning in London’s nightclubs.’

Once again, Sarah persuaded herself she was in charge – although she remembers emerging from hotel rooms late at night and feeling envious of the anonymous guests sleeping safely behind their doors.

‘There were many occasions I just felt like a lost soul putting on an act.’

By now, another pattern was emerging. Alongside the men who paid her for sex came relationships with married men. She claims among them were Jeffrey Archer, between 1997 and 1998, and later Gordon Ramsay, whom she met in 2001 and whom she claims she was in a relationship with until 2008 – though she is firm that none of the married men with whom she says she had relationships ever paid her for sex.

At the time, Sarah saw little connection between her escorting and her apparent willingness to accept the role of the other woman – although it’s a link she now sees very clearly.

‘Looking back, I think it’s no coincidence that I became the other woman,’ she says. ‘I thought I didn’t deserve anything more. Sometimes I’d get so depressed I felt like I was trying to climb out of a grave – but it was a grave I had created.’

By 2003, Sarah had moved to Los Angeles for work and met another married man, a wealthy British businessman she has always referred to publicly only as ‘Mr X’.

This time she fell deeply in love.

‘I totally fell for him. And while, yes, he was married, he treated me amazingly.

‘Even so, I always felt I had to prove myself. There was a sense of “what single guy would stay faithful to me anyway?”’

That sense only deepened over the next few years as she divided her time between LA and Wales, where her parents were in deteriorating health.

In 2012, she returned to Wales for good. Away from the frenetic lifestyle that had sustained her for so many years, things began to unravel.

‘I had had high hopes for a reality series called The Mistress, in which I helped mistresses sever their ties with their married lovers. It had been commissioned in Canada, but when that wasn’t renewed it hit me hard. It felt like I had nothing to focus on.’

Consolation was found at the bottom of a bottle, leading to a battle with alcoholism that she finally conquered two years ago.

There have been other challenges, too. In 2023, Sarah found a lump in her breast which, too frightened to address, she only consulted a doctor about last year.

‘I was in a mess and I couldn’t handle any more bad news,’ she says. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy. ‘I’ve been told the treatment has been a success and hopefully I am in remission.

‘Sadly, the treatment left me with a life-threatening condition of adrenal insufficiency, which requires daily medication for the rest of my life.’

While there have been boyfriends since those headline-making years, no relationship has lasted.

‘Most men want regular women. I’m not that woman; I don’t fit the mould,’ she says. ‘I just feel I can’t function in a conventional relationship.’

Yet she says she’s now ‘at peace’ with being on her own.

She is aware of the irony that this hard-won peace has come from living the kind of quiet life her younger self was so desperate to escape.

‘I won’t lie. There were a lot of thrills, excitement, rollercoaster times back then – but the good did not outweigh the bad, or the long-term damage,’ she says.

‘I hope young women can read my story and realise that a lot of what they mistake for happiness – including money and glamour – is just an illusion.’