CLARE Gee has no time at all for writers such as Brooke Magnanti, better known as the blogger Belle de Jour. Books like Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl – dramatised for TV with Billie Piper playing Belle – try to make prostitution sound glamorous, fun and exciting, Clare says.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Whether it is plying your trade on a street corner to get cash to pay for your next fix, or charging £300 for an hour in a Knightsbridge hotel, it makes no difference.

“It’s not glamorous. It’s not a fabulous life. It ruins you. If you start doing it, it will nearly kill you. Nothing positive can come out of it. Any woman who sells her body is emotionally screwed up.”

She knows, because the 32-year-old, who grew up in a North Yorkshire town, has been there. And she hopes that the life she describes in her first book, Hooked, will act as a warning to any young woman who thinks prostitution is glamorous, or an easy way to make some quick money.

Hooked is sub-titled Confessions Of A London Call Girl. At first it seems like a shameless attempt to cash in on the Belle de Jour phenomenon. Start reading it and you realise, very quickly, that it is quite the opposite.

Hooked is an explicit, graphic, ultimately terrifying read. The depths to which the central character Katie – firmly based on Clare herself – sinks, are scary.

Clare writes of coke-fuelled millionaires’ parties in expensive London hotel suites where she and other call girls are hired to provide sex on demand. She writes about the smell of men she finds unattractive, but has to have sex with anyway. She writes about getting out of her head on coke and booze so she is numbed to the men who use her.

In one scene she joins an “agency” because she thinks it will be safer. The pimp, who likes to be known as Big Daddy, has to try her out first.

“He took me to a grotty hotel by the side of a dual carriageway, near Hammersmith. I lay on my back...”

There is also a brutal rape … just one of the occupational hazards of the prostitute’s life, Clare says.

So how did she get into this life? And, perhaps as important, how did she get out of it?

Her voice on the other end of the telephone is clear and light. She talks frankly and articulately – but the anxiety is never far away. She has always suffered from chronic low self-esteem, and even self-loathing, she admits. It was that, and her desperate sense of insecurity, that led her to alcohol and drugs as a teenager. And it was ultimately those that led her to prostitution.

Clare is her real name, but the Gee is made up to protect her anonymity. Mainly it is for the sake of her father, who still lives in the North Yorkshire town where Clare grew up.

“I love my dad,” she says. “I have people I have to consider.”

She was born in Africa, the daughter of an African mother and an English father. The marriage didn’t last. Her dad returned to England and at the age of five, Clare’s mother seems to have decided she didn’t want her daughter any more. She put her on a plane to London.

“I was alone on the plane,” Clare says. “When I reached London, an air stewardess took me through.”

It was cold in London, and she was wearing just a cotton summer dress. Worst of all, she spoke no English, so could hardly communicate with the father she barely knew. She was also traumatised by the fact her mother didn’t want her.

Growing up in North Yorkshire, she became desperately clingy, constantly terrified her father would leave her too. As a young girl, she tried to be the perfect daughter, quiet, obedient, never answering back. But as she grew older, the constant anxiety and low self-esteem began to affect her. She started to act up. One day, aged about 13, she found a bottle of alcohol in her dad’s drinks cabinet. She started drinking, in secret, to ease the pain. “It made me feel less stressed.” A couple of years later, through experimenting with friends, she discovered drugs. She was hooked. She drank and took drugs to numb the feelings. Her relationship with her father fragmented. “I was taking drugs, drinking, being utterly selfish.”

At 16, she ran away to London with a boyfriend. It wasn’t until a several years later, however, that she turned to prostitution. She found herself penniless, and desperate for cash to buy drugs. A friend – she is called Petra in the book – told her it was easy to make money by selling yourself.

“My first response was, I was shocked. But I was fascinated, and I asked lots of questions. After a couple of days I said I’d like to have a go.”

She was fixed up with a client. That first time was terrifying, she says.

“When you go to knock on that door, you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

But she was desperate, and felt she had no choice. “Petra said ‘pretend it is a one-night stand’, and I did that.”

It was all over quickly, and she left £80 richer and feeling elated. But the next morning, it hit her. She had a panic attack, and heard voices in her head, telling her how bad she was.

But, having once sold yourself, she says, it becomes so easy to do it again.

And so, still desperate for money to buy drugs and booze, she did. Again and again.

Looking back on it now, after having quit the life six years ago and cleaned herself up through rehab, she can’t believe that she ever let herself get drawn into it. It came close to destroying her. Time and time again, she thought: ‘I can’t do this any more’. But she always did.

At one point, she found herself back in Africa, entering into a bigamous marriage. It was a disaster.

Desperate to escape, she agreed to carry drugs back to the UK. And then she ended up back in prostitution again.

Until one day, for no apparent reason, she found herself calling a rehab clinic.

She was in rehab for 12 weeks, in recovery for much longer.

But now she’s got herself sorted out. She lives alone in a one-bed flat near London, works as a receptionist, and does some freelance writing. Writing her book was partly an act of therapy, but also intended as a warning.

Young women today are bombarded with messages telling them they should become WAGs or topless models, and that there is easy money to be had from flaunting or selling your body. And books like Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl portray prostitution as all jolly hockey sticks, she says.

It isn’t. It is sordid, degrading, and utterly destructive.

“If there is any woman out there that’s considering it, I’d say don’t do it! Speak to someone.

“You’re standing on the edge of a cliff, and if you take that step you’ll fall off the edge.”

•Hooked, by Clare Gee, is published by Mainstream, priced £7.99