A close encounter with Billie Piper

The last time I talked to English singer and actress Billie Piper, she was sweet 16 and squeaky clean.

A graduate of the same performing arts school that gave us such musical titans as SClub 7, Blue and Five, she'd just released a bubblegum pop record that had topped the UK charts, and her public image was as pure as the driven snow.

That was nine years ago. Since then, and there's no delicate way to say this, Billie Piper has become a bit of a ho.

In new Prime series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Piper, now 25, has put her formerly chaste image behind her to play a high-class hooker.

The series is based on a book, The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, which is in turn based on the explicit online diary of a well-educated 28-year-old prostitute who calls herself Belle du Jour.

In the TV series, Belle's name has been changed to Hannah, and Piper plays her with impressive gusto.

Unsurprisingly, given that Piper gets around the place in teensy undies and spends a good deal of her time topless, the show was a huge hit in the UK when it screened there in September last year. The debut episode attracted just over 1.8 million viewers.

"I think so many people watched it because prostitution is a fascinating subject," says Piper from her London home.

"We're only used to seeing how tragic that profession can be, but this show is based around the story of a woman whose life was far from tragic. I also think a lot of people watched it because they'd already read the book."

Really? I thought they'd watched it because your average "national sweetheart" generally refrains from getting naked on the telly. You see, Piper is something of an institution in Blighty. She's been a fixture on radio and TV there since she was a little kid, though what made her a star in recent years was not her singing, but her acting.

In 2005, Piper landed the role of Rose Tyler, assistant to the titular hero in sci-fi comedy, Doctor Who. Imbuing the role with equal parts sweetness and sass, Piper became the best-loved sidekick in the 45-year history of the series.

Britain's Daily Telegraph even opined that her "cool glamour and street-wise pluck" in Doctor Who had made her the "national sweetheart".

Piper has also acquitted herself well in various historical costume dramas, most recently bringing a winning combination of big teeth, batting eyelashes, blushing cheeks and heaving bosom to the role of Fanny Price in a BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

These key roles made Piper the most popular young actress in Britain, so huge viewing audiences were assured as soon as she agreed to strip down to her suspenders and simulate sex on prime-time telly.

"Yes, I suppose that's true," she says in her slightly posh Home Counties accent.

"There is a certain level of nudity and, shall we say, experimental sex in this show that some would find attractive, even if they hadn't read the book. Not everybody approves, of course. We've also had people saying they find it all slightly distasteful. But, you know, whatever."

HITTING THE CHARTS EARLY

The eldest of four children, Piper was born in 1982. She filmed her first television commercial, for breakfast cereal, when she was seven, won a scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School when she was 12, and signed a record deal when she was 15.

In 1998, Piper became the youngest artist ever to debut at number one on the UK pop charts with the song Because We Want To. Her debut album Honey to the B followed soon after, selling more than three million copies. Second album Walk of Life arrived in 2000, but tanked in the lower reaches of the charts.

Piper married multi-millionaire BBC DJ Chris Evans in Las Vegas the following year, which caused much tut-tutting in the tabloids as Evans was nearly twice her age. This new relationship ensured that, even as her pop career slumped, her media profile remained high, although probably not in a way Piper would have liked.

She was now the once-famous young wife of a still-famous older man, a man so wealthy that the couple went on honeymoon for two entire years. In many press photos of the day, Piper seems little more than a cute accessory to Evans' playboy lifestyle, with the two of them broiling on beaches, swanning around on yachts, staggering drunk out of exclusive nightclubs, blurring past in sports cars. But the marriage did not last.

The couple split after three years, and Piper married actor Laurence Fox, son of actor James Fox, on New Year's Eve, 2007.

Somewhere along the way, Piper reinvented herself as an actor. Early roles had critics agreeing she was a far better actress than she was a singer, while her work on Doctor Who won her numerous TV personality awards and turned her into a teenage role model.

These days, England is awash with young women who dye their hair blonde but leave their eyebrows dark, just like Piper, and it's quite possible that she has also caused hundreds of teenage girls to decline expensive dental work, having done more than any woman alive to make a huge overbite seem sexy.

It is Piper's role-model status that has caused some commentators to express alarm over this new show, alleging that it glamorises the inherently grim profession of prostitution. Perhaps it does.

Certainly, Piper's character spends all her time drifting between her chi-chi apartment and various luxury hotels, having dinner, cocktails, erudite conversation and hot sex with men who are handsome, friendly or both, all of which might conceivably make prostitution look like a ripper of a career choice for young women.

Where's the loneliness, the exploitation, the degradation, the sadness?

"Really, I don't think this series glamorises anything," says Piper. "When Trainspotting came out, all these people claimed it glamorised heroin use, but in no way did I think great, soon as this film's over I'm gonna go and get my first fix. People need to be given some credit for being able to tell the difference between art and reality.

"Also, our show tells a true story! This is one girl who feels empowered by her job and is very selective about what she does. I think the fact that she wears nice clothes, lives in west London and is quite materialistic makes people think it's glamorous, but that is her story, and we're telling it as it happened."

Actually, this too has been up for debate. Some believe the blog and book on which this series is based are pure fiction, written by someone with no experience in the sex industry.

She writes pointy-headed prose about "the explicit commodification of sex" being "preferable to the hawthorn thicket of modern relationships", and discusses the works of Germaine Greer, Goethe and Pablo Neruda with clients before disrobing for a spot of hectic how's your father.

IS 'CALL GIRL' TRUE TO LIFE?

Critics, including several sex workers, have pointed out that most women working as prostitutes are far less articulate, and do so because of poverty, severely limited employment opportunities, or personal damage such as sexual abuse or drug addiction.

"But despite what those critics say, Belle de Jour does exist," insists Piper.

"I've met her! She doesn't work as a prostitute any more, but she still keeps her anonymity because people are so quick to judge her. And even before I met her, I believed what she wrote, because her observations of men and of life are too refined and too accurate to be fiction.

"Look, you can't assume that all women who lay on their backs for cash are victims. It's naive to think that people like Belle don't exist who actually enjoy the work.

"People get quite het-up and prudish about the idea of women being paid for sex. Some feminists here were up in arms over this show, but if they'd bothered to stick with it, they'd have seen that as the series unfolds it becomes obvious that it's a very difficult and isolating career.

"When I was doing the sex scenes, I realised I could never do it. I can't emotionally disconnect, and I like being monogamous. I would feel awful, having sex for money, no matter how much I was getting paid."

The popularity of The Secret Diary of a Call Girl has seen a second series commissioned; it begins filming in June.

"Yes, which means I really need to get my shit together and learn some lines," Piper says.

"I'm sure this role has really tarnished my image in some quarters, but I'm not too worried about that. I never got into acting to become the nation's sweetheart, and I'm not going to turn down good roles because my audience might not like them. I'm going to choose roles because they fascinate me. Really, I hope people find this show as thought-provoking as I found it, and that they look at this woman's life without being too judgemental.

"After all, prostitutes aren't the only people that have really dirty sex. Ordinary people are very adventurous, too, which is why we have sex shops doing very well these days. People get their kicks in many different ways, and this show tries to show that.

"Some people have been offended by that, but to be honest, I think people should just relax!"

*Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Prime, Thursday, 9.30pm. 

- © Fairfax NZ News