‘Boris Johnson is not allowed in my sex club – but Rishi Sunak would get a warmer welcome’

Few doors have ever been closed to Boris Johnson, a man who - unfortunately for his reputation with the voters - is well known to enjoy a party.

But if he had the inclination to show up, the Prime Minister might find himself turned away from a succession of discreet London townhouses this summer. By a company, no less, in which the Government is now a shareholder.

Killing Kittens, a female-led sex party provider founded by the Duchess of Cambridge's childhood friend Emma Sayle, is now 1.5 per cent owned by the British taxpayer following a public sector bailout during the Covid crisis.

But despite this support, she is clear that some Cabinet ministers would not get past the bouncers checking guests have their £250-a-night tickets to hedonism. Would Johnson, for instance, be allowed in?

“No, absolutely not. No thank you," says Sayle, 44.

“I don’t want a bunch of entitled, privileged men thinking they can get away with murder and doing what they want - which is what they’ve done.

"Guys having mistresses and cheating on their wives is not what we’re about in any shape or form. It is the opposite of what we are. I don’t condone any of that."

Sayle has always been fascinated by tales of debauchery. In her late twenties she would laugh at the stories told to her by Cynthia Payne, the late brothel keeper dubbed “Madam Cyn” who became a source of national fascination after she was jailed for running the biggest “disorderly house” in British history in the 1980s.

When Sayle first met Payne, the former had just been dubbed the “poshest swinger in town” after setting up Killing Kittens. But in contrast to the industry's pioneers, whose parties revolved around the pleasure of high-status men who paid for sex, hers are all about empowering women. 

The concept behind Killing Kittens has proved so popular that 17 years after her first party it has become a byword for middle-class sexual awakenings.

Now all of Britain is a shareholder under the terms of a Covid rescue loans programme set up by Rishi Sunak during the pandemic. Critics of the business will seize on the investment as emblematic of further sleaze in Johnson’s party following a string of sexual allegations.

But Sayle argues that such bad behaviour is exactly why she created her business in the first place. Men are not allowed to go to her events without a woman and cannot approach other guests first. Everyone is vetted and sent a list of rules beforehand.

Despite her opposition to Johnson - she insists that Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, would get a much warmer welcome - the association between sex parties and the British establishment is hardly new.

Top Tory aide Douglas Smith, one of Johnson’s advisers - described as “the most powerful man in Britain you’ve never heard of” - was known for organising high-society sex parties in Mayfair townhouses and country mansions in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Dubbed the “king of the urban swingers”, he ran London-based business Fever Parties when he was co-ordinator of Conservatives for Change, sparking angst among supporters in 2005 after a controversial tabloid investigation exposed one of his “VIP orgies” and highlighted the wealthy backgrounds of its guests.

The clientele was hardly surprising. It was also rich businessmen, politicians and public figures who were said to have enjoyed Madam Cyn’s Streatham sex parties decades earlier, with a running joke at the time relaying how a participating vicar, questioned by police, had responded: “I demand to see my solicitor… who is in the next bedroom”.

Killing Kittens’ customer base is different, in that the focus is on women and it has a large online community, but the nights out still appear to be geared towards the wealthy - a ticket for two costs around £250.

So small is the circle of people who attend that one high-earning City worker says she was left red-faced after bumping into someone she knew through work at one of the parties.

Sayle, who briefly worked for Fever herself, accepts that people will make assumptions. “I went to Downe House, an all-girls boarding school for ten years with connections at school with Kate Middleton and a dad who is a defence attaché.

"So you just assume if that’s the person organising it, then that’s the people who are going.

"Even now with this loan, I’ve seen stuff on Twitter assuming I’ve got friends in high places who have given me the money. But I don’t know anyone in the Government. I haven’t pulled any favours through rich friends to get any money.”

Sayle is also confident that her sex club scene can make the British taxpayer richer.

Lockdown, she explains, saw people so bored that those who would never have dreamt of becoming Killing Kittens members pre-pandemic were suddenly joining their weekly “Zoom orgy,” Sayle says - an appetite which hasn’t dwindled since restrictions were lifted.

Even a two-year health crisis followed by headlines about the monkeypox virus hasn’t made people wary about mixing with others.

“People crack on - they’ve seen partygate, they know restrictions should never have been placed in the first place, and what I see around me is people going ‘no, life’s too short’," she says.

"You can wrap yourself in cotton wool and hide from the world or get out there and live”.

Killing Kittens will soon be calling out to commuters after Transport for London (TfL) agreed that the company could advertise on its billboards. The plan after that is to aim for a stock market float or sale, ideally in 2025, because that would mark 20 years since Sayle set up her business and she likes round numbers.

There has already been lots of takeover interest from global dating groups, she claims, but it is too soon to sell. If the company eventually ends up floating on the stock market she is expecting to face some snootiness from London’s “boys club” of investors.

“The City is so old school," she says. "Anything to do with women's sexuality or femtech is not seen as important compared to the billions pumped into erectile dysfunction pharma.

I'd like to say it's got better in the last 20 years but it really hasn't, it's the same s--- just hidden under a load of virtue signalling shovels.”

Killing Kittens will no doubt try to overcome that snootiness when it asks investors to join the party. Just don't expect any overtures to Boris Johnson.