Secret life of a nude model

To women of a certain age, former councillor Jeremy Spark's charms are impossible to resist.

Despite his greying hair and ageing body, this man has hearts racing all over the green belt.

Yet the women who take advantage of his manhood are not sleazy dollybirds or Sex And The City strumpets.

These are a generation of ladies whose propriety has always seemed unimpeachable - the jam-making housewives with curtains that twitch at the hint of scandal; the middle-class, middle-aged village fete organisers with Agas, WI membership cards and a subscription to Good Housekeeping.

Jeremy lives in a pretty cottage in a village near the chocolate-box town of Midhurst. He is well-spoken and impeccably polite. It would be impossible to guess that he spends much of his time posing naked and indulging in what is essentially paid-for sex.

Not that the former businessman set out to be a gigolo - or even a life model. It is something he fell into completely by accident.

The year he turned 58, Jeremy's life was a hectic series of meetings and troubleshooting. As a fund-raising consultant, he had a stressful, busy job. He expected to carry on working well into his 60s.

But, one catastrophic afternoon six years ago, his well-ordered life was suddenly overturned.

"I was in a meeting, with all of us sitting around a table and I just keeled over on to the floor. Everything suddenly felt very strange.

"I was taken to King's Hospital and told I had had a stroke.

"For weeks I couldn't speak or move properly. It took me several weeks to walk again. I stayed in hospital for six weeks and even when I came out, I was told not to do anything for at least two months.

"The stroke came completely out of the blue. I had no idea how to do nothing because I had always worked. To be frank, the idea frightened me.

"There's an artist who lives almost next door to me and he asked if I would sit for him. I had admired his work and I was flattered.

"After a while, he asked me to life model for him and a group of other artists. I thought about it and said providing it was kosher I didn't mind at all.

"The first time he suggested it, though, I didn't know if I could do it. I was worried about how it would feel to be naked in front of a group of people.

"I was embarrassed but I would say the students were more embarrassed than me.

"I lived in the tropics for a long time so I am used to the feeling of being exposed to the open air.

"Although it was nerve-racking at first, after one or two sittings I felt fine. By this stage I decided to tell my family what I was doing. They were very understanding.

"The fact is, if you lose half your brain and you can't use your body as well as you could, there's not much you can do anymore."

Jeremy, now 64, was still a councillor at the time, so he put a note in the parish magazine explaining that he was a life model for the art group and invited new members along.

"I wanted to be upfront about it rather than have people sniggering behind my back.

"I did get a few sideways glances and one or two extra people turned up to the classes because they knew me as a councillor and wanted to see the 'real' me.

"And I did bump into people in the village who had seen me with no clothes on. That happened all the time. But generally it wasn't a problem.

"I joined the register of artists' models and soon realised there was a hell of a demand for life models. I started getting calls from people asking if they could do it too, so I set up Lyncot Studio.

"I converted a hut I was using as a dark room into a studio, where I now hold classes, and I also started an agency for other life models.

"Life modelling does involve a certain amount of training. There are recognised poses and you have to develop the ability to sit very still so the people who are on my books are trained to do that.

"I have one rule - that the sitting time will be longer than the journey time. But apart from that I will go anywhere in Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Hampshire. I don't do it for the money anyway. I see myself as providing a service."

If Jeremy never set out to be a life model, he certainly didn't intend to become a gigolo. Again, it was something he fell into almost by accident.

"It honestly just went from one thing to another quite naturally. At the end of an ordinary life drawing class, inevitably someone asks you to do the same thing for a smaller group of people, perhaps three or four.

"This smaller group is always made up of women - and inevitably at least one will ask me to do 'private' modelling for them. You go along, do a session and very often that will turn into sex.

"You know when they ask you to model privately that it may well turn into sex - although you can choose whether or not you agree to do it. But I am a generous sort of guy so I do quite a lot of that.

"Most of the women are middle-aged, middle-class housewives. They are often bored and looking for some excitement.

"It amazed me how sexually assertive these women could be. It is jolly nice to have women come up to me and ask for sex.

"They are part of the WI generation. Their children have grown up and their husbands work long hours and they are looking for a way to fill their time.

"Forgive me for being crude but once they have seen the toy they want to play with it."

"I never imagined I might get into something like that. The fact that the life modelling leads on to sex is an added advantage as far as I am concerned.

"I got divorced a few years before my stroke and I found the idea of giving up sex completely unpalatable.

"Now all my sexual needs are met through my job. I certainly don't have any shortage of offers."

Jeremy also models in erotic poses for photographs and paintings.

"For erotic work, there is no set rate. It depends on the level of the work - sometimes you will do a 'loving' pose which isn't pornographic at all. Or you can do soft or hardcore photographs.

"It is totally up to you but I have made up to £500 a day from doing erotic work."

Not everyone on Jeremy's books indulges in erotic work or post-posing sex.

He stresses that most of the time his own career is simply a matter of modelling for artists and students and there is no erotic element involved. But it is a part of the job he finds particularly enjoyable.

It has, however, caused problems in his personal life.

"I did have a partner at one point but it didn't work out. My job didn't cause conflict with her but she had two teenage boys and I think it worried them. In the end we broke up partly for that reason."

Despite these difficulties, Jeremy would not swap his profession for another.

"If I had carried on doing my old job I think I would be very bored by now.

"Apart from anything else there is something quite reassuring about having all those images of yourself hanging on people's walls and in art galleries. I suppose it is a sort of immortality.

"People have come up to me and said, 'don't I know you from somewhere?' and I know, just know, it's because they have seen a picture of me hanging up in a gallery.

"Sometimes they realise and say, 'I didn't recognise you with your clothes on'.

"One can joke but it is a good feeling to know that all these pictures exist.

"I have three statues of myself in the garden and I am planning to give one to each of my three daughters when I die so they will have something to remember me by.

"I plan on carrying on with the life modelling for many years - including the erotic work and the sex. I will answer the calls for as long as they keep coming or until bits of me start dropping off."