WHEN I heard last week that recording artist Lily Allen had admitted to sleeping with female escorts during her 2014 Sheezus tour, I have to confess that I barely batted an eyelid.

After all, paying a beautiful woman to warm your bed is surely a standard in the canon of rock star behaviour, along with trashing hotel rooms and demanding only red M & Ms on your tour rider.

But in an interview on The Project, she elaborated, saying, “It’s more about a period of time when I was feeling incredibly lonely, and sort of at my wits’ end, and I was looking for anything – looking for an outlet. So it’s not really, like, a salacious sex story.

“It’s more about [being in] hotel rooms like the one we are sitting in, and being on my own and being very far away from my kids and my husband.”

Allen might’ve joined the countless other musicians – and people from all walks of life – who’ve called upon a sex worker in an hour of need.

But she had also done something few others have: she had admitted to being lonely.

And while on the road, far away from her family and presumably far away from her friends, she turned to sex workers for comfort, company, and compassion.

There are people who look down on the adult industry as being little more than a conveyor belt of disposable women providing mechanical, unenjoyable sex to groups of braying punters; and I believe firmly that they couldn’t be missing the point more.

When I wrote about why I believe some men cheat with sex workers, I said that I’ve seen many men visit brothels to have their emotional needs met in ways they don’t feel they are in their primary relationships.

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