The woman who taught Britain how to have sex – but died penniless and alone


The woman who taught Britain how to have sex – but died penniless and alone

21 December 2024 8:00pm GMT You may not recognise her name or her face, but chances are Wendy-Ann Paige was once having sex in your living room (or someone you know’s living room). As the female star of the best-selling 90s sex education video The Lovers’ Guide, Wendy’s face (and her naked body) beamed out from the cover of a VHS that would sell 1.3million copies in the UK alone (and hundreds of thousands more around the world). She’s been called the “Angelina Jolie of the sex ed video market”, and was once a millionaire sex columnist with a five-book deal. Yet this week the 61-year-old died penniless and “living like a hermit” in chronic pain, in a rundown flat in Southend, Essex. In the current era of PornHub and OnlyFans, it’s hard to imagine the furore that The Lovers’ Guide caused when it was released in September 1991. Made by film producer Robert Page, who had previously made how-to videos about gardening, it started life as a sexual health film for men about how to put on condoms, and evolved into being the first film available on the high street to show actual sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. Wendy was working as a marketing director for a property company when she met Tony Duffield in 1989. He was a sound engineer for the band Madness and came into her office to visit a friend who worked there. They instantly hit it off after he fixed her filing cabinet (not a euphemism), and a year later the Essex couple responded to an advert in a swingers’ magazine for “real people” to appear in a sex education video. Wendy recalled that she was asked to lie on the floor and masturbate during the audition. “I wasn’t nervous, I was a natural,” she said. “I had a thoroughly good time and after I orgasmed.” The film, which showed the Duffields and six other couples demonstrating soft and sensual lovemaking, was shot at a studio in West London. “There were 35 male crew in the room and cameras everywhere, just one female,” Wendy recalled. “After I finished, I said, ‘Can I do it again?’”