Content area
Full text
Tonight, when the house is dark and quiet, think of two men. One of them will be sitting alone in front of a computer screen, his trousers round his ankles. Logged on to a members-only website, staring at a picture of a gang bang, seeking relief. The other will also be alone at a screen, in the wood-panelled office of his mansion in Essex, home at last after another long day. His motivation will not be lust or loneliness but a passion for profit. His eye will not be on female forms but on the seductive curve of a graph, the proud columns of a bar chart, the rhythmic rise and fall of figures that tell him how many people are logging-on to his websites and calling his chatlines. This second man will be able to call up information about the faceless, nameless first, and about many others - including, crucially, what turns them on. The pages they prefer, the chatlines they call. He will not be watching the hardcore images download or listening to the women in call-centres whisper suggestive nothings. He wouldn't want to. His excitement - the buzz that keeps him returning to his computer throughout the night - is in the pulsing stream of statistics.
The first man might be you, your husband, lover, son or brother. The second is definitely David Sullivan. "I check the Internet when I come in, whatever time it is," says the statistician, multi- millionaire football club owner and publisher routinely referred to in print as a porn baron. "I'm checking businesses I've got. Membership, people who have joined. Places we get royalties on."
We are talking at Birch Hall, his pounds 7m house in Epping Forest. Sullivan is wearing Versace: not a gaudy, lavish outfit but a grey sweatshirt and pants that go with the dumbells in the corner. There are no naked bodies on display, save the classical statues around the fountain in the courtyard outside. The women at work in the room next door are immaculate and attractive, but some years past the teenage prime of a glamour model. The office could be that of a racing trainer, with bronze and silver statues of equine beauty standing proud on mahogany shelves. Plates...