A couple of months ago there was a media tizzy over the Channel 4 "documentary" 1000 Men and Me: the Bonnie Blue story. Rather to my surprise, Mrs H agreed we should watch this to make our own minds up about the, ahem, journalistic merit of the story.
Bonnie Blue is the alter ego of Tia Billinger from Nottinghamshire, a girl with a middle class upbringing and a fascination with reality tv who turned a side hustle into a lucrative business based around exploiting her body utilising the OnlyFans "platform for creators". Having become a "webcam model" and finding she could earn $5,000 a week she launched her OnlyFans page and established her USP in the porn market: having free sex with members of the public provided they consented to it being filmed and posted on line. The Sun showed her holding a poster saying "bonk me for free, let me film it".
The documentary charted her progress as she increased her monthly earnings into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, hiring a support team to help produce the videos and deal with all the paperwork. In order to grow her number of regular followers she decided she didn't just need to create content but to plan ever more eye popping stunts. She'd already run a series of videos about having sex with "barely legals" (which she noted wasn't her phrase) which put a whole new angle on university freshers' weeks. Her big wheeze was to set a world record by having sex with over 1,000 men in a day.
The documentary showed her planning and then posting the invitation, telling punters where they could report to take part while wondering aloud to the camera whether anyone would actually turn up. The film showed lines of men (waist down) queueing to take their turn. Bonnie had already told us they would get 40 seconds each to "do what they wanted", penetration counting as "having sex". This was some production line.
The stunt achieved its publicity objectives and her income soared to $500,000 dollars a month (some sources say over $2m a month). Where's there's muck, there's brass as they say.
However when she planned her next big stunt - being tied up naked in a glass box while members of the public did what they wanted to her - OnlyFans tired of her attention grabbing antics, or rather the credit card business that collects the cash from her punters decided it was harming their image and pressured OnlyFans to ditch her. The documentary showed a crisis meeting with her team as Bonnie realised her income had gone down from megabucks to zero in an instant.
She was more than put out - she had run every idea past the OnlyFans people before publishing her videos and got their ok. And, as she pointed out, while it might be a "platform for creators" the overwhelmimg majority of content posted is porn. She was more than miffed by the double standards.
She was only allowed to continue posting material if it used actors. So she returned to more conventional porn for a while but the need to maintain interest amongst her followers meant multiple men. Which she noted was exhausting because they were much fitter and stronger than members of the public.
Salvation was at hand in the form of another, less well known, site called Fansly. Bonnie fretted about how much the change would hit her income. Reports don't confirm her income on the new platform but it would be no sweat for her fans to migrate to Fansly so my guess is she's still putting it out there and coining it.
What did we think of the Channel 4 "documentary"? The content was tawdry, vulgar and undignified but the way it was portrayed, with some pixellation of Bonnie's anatomy and her punters only ever shown from the waist down and never actually doing anything could not be called obscene.
Perhaps the grossest moment in the film was when Bonnie, having completed her epic feat of endurance cast her eyes over the floor of her ad hoc studio which was littered with discarded condoms and the odd bit of mislaid clothing (some of her punters must have arrived home with the odd sock missing). With a mischievous glint in her eye as an idea formed she lay down on the floor and did that snow angel thing with her arms an legs that people do in the snow, brushing the detritus aside. Yuck!
Surprisingly we warmed to some aspects of her personality. She seems close to her family and looks after them. While her parents had been shocked at their daughter's choice of "career" they are supportive, but then they've had their mortgage paid off. Her mum acts as Bonnie's PA and several of the family are Bonnie's payroll.
Her school mates have said they were shocked and surprised at how their friend's life has evolved. Tia married her privately educated boyfriend Olli, who had encouraged her when she had doubts about her webcam career, thinking she wasn't pretty enough and people wouldn't want to watch her. "No, you're beautiful, do it" the Sun reported. Olli's parents had subsidised the couple in the early days before her revenue earning took off and, at the start of the period covered by the documentary, they were still married. But by the end the weren't together.
There were a couple of take away messages from the Bonnie Blue documentary besides the obvious titillation.
Firstly, Bonnie said she found what she did "empowering". I get that - it's certainly empowered her to accumulate a lot of money very quickly. It's her choice what she does with her body. But the obvious point to make is that what empowers her helps to disempower, intimidate and hurt large numbers of other women who aren't so assertive. The documentary didn't probe that issue, which left one feeling it was really just - er - light entertainment.
Secondly, there was some furore in the media over the ease with which young people could avoid age restrictions and view the documentary on Channel 4's streaming service. While it was tawdry it didn't show anything the majority of even "just teens" wouldn't already have been exposed to. Not that that's a good thing but that pass was sold a long time ago, unfortunately. But I wouldn't have wanted younger children to see it, with Bonnie (clothed) discussing with her producer whether the various bits of furniture were at a comfortable height for her purposes and trying out (on her own) some different positions. I'm very critical of the social media companies for not doing enough on age verification. But when the government can't seem to make sure that only people of an appropriate age watch services like Channel 4 catch up or BBC's iPlayer, how do they expect facebook, youtube and OnlyFans to do what they aren't doing with organisations under their control? For me that was perhaps as significant a point as any.
On a rather different note, after watching the programme I found myself humming a song from the early 80s I don't think I've heard in 40 years. After a while I identified it as punk influenced Tenpole Tudor's song "Swords of a Thousand Men". Ha, that's why I was humming it!
More on Tenpole Tudor below. And here is Bonnie Blue in a slightly more demure pose than some of them in the documentary:
1000 men and me: the Bonnie Blue story "documentary" is available on Channel 4's catch up service.
1000 Men and Me: the Bonnie Blue Story review - the troubling tale sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours. The Guardian, 29 July 2025
Bonnie Blue bedded hundreds of teens. But she also had a private school rugby husband and a VERY middle class upbringing. The Sun 11 November 2024 https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/31632237/bonnie-blue-middle-class-upbringing-husband/
I remembered punk recording artist Tenpole Tudor from his role in Julian Temple's 1981 film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle in which he played himself, being called "Tadpole" throughout by Irene Handl's character. Swords of a Thousand Men was his most successful recording, reaching number 6 in the UK singles chart in the same year with its singalong chorus of "Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah, yeah - over the hill with the swords of a thousand men" over a simple but catchy guitar riff. Tenpole performed under the name of Edward Tenpole, though his real name is Edward Felix Tudor-Pole. Yes, he's an actual aristocrat, a descendent of Owen Tudor, grandfather of King Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty. Punk rockers, eh?
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