A NOTTINGHAM city councillor has revealed she worked as a high-class London escort.

Basford Councillor Catharine Arnold said she became an escort after getting into financial difficulties while living in the capital in her twenties.

She made the revelation in a Sunday newspaper to publicise her new book, City Of Sin: London And Its Vices.

Speaking to the Post, she said: "It was a long time ago. I had always kept this to myself until I was approached about my new book. I thought I'd rather be in control of what comes out.

"I'm hoping that we are all grown up and others will realise that people do a few things when they are younger.

"I think people will be more concerned about what I can do as a councillor. The fact that I've lived a bit should not go against me.

"I wouldn't recommend [high class escorting] it as a career. I've got nothing but sympathy for women who get involved with this lifestyle.

"The world is much more scary these days. There's criminal gangs organising these things."

Councillor Arnold, a former Hollygirt pupil, did not want to reveal what she earned as an escort but said it was "enough to pay my taxes".

Labour leaders on Nottingham City Council were told of her intention to make public her escort past before the article was written.

Deputy leader Councillor Graham Chapman said: "We're very relaxed about this. It's her private life. She's doing a damn good job as a councillor."

Councillor Arnold, a married mother of two, told the Sunday newspaper: "I wasn't an obvious candidate for recruitment to the sex industry. I'd come down from Cambridge with a degree in English and a broken heart, keen to see life, only to wind up in a string of temporary jobs and broke.

"Far from looking like a conventional hooker, I was a gamine public school girl with a fresh complexion and a good figure. I had always had a thing about older men, perhaps because I lost my father young.

"I was never hard enough to be a real 'Mayfair mercenary', as the top girls were known. I never went to Tokyo Joe's or Tramp and the women who did terrified me.

"I wasn't interested in rock stars or celebrities.

"I knew my type: they were the older men who would take me to dinner and tell me about their children. I nursed the hope that at some stage I would meet a kindly sugar daddy who would set me up in Mayfair. But I never found such a man."

After a year she gave up escorting, having fallen in love with an Italian man who took her to Italy for the summer.

When she returned, she found her first book was to be published for which she got an advance of £3,000.