Lily Phillips is counting down the days to Christmas, when she’ll celebrate with her family in a pretty village near Derby. The festive spirit will be very much alive and her parents still insist she and her older brother hang their stockings for Santa.
‘They even make us do the plate of carrots and mince pies [for Santa and his reindeers]!’ she says. ‘But we all love it – it’s just good being together and nice not to be working for once. I’m very excited because I really love giving presents, and this year I’m giving them all a big ski holiday.’
How lovely! And then she’ll have a nice restorative break before she tackles her New Year’s Resolution.
Which, I promise, is not like yours or mine. Or anyone else’s on the planet.
Because Lily, 23, has set herself the target – please brace yourselves here – of breaking a world record by sleeping with 1,000 men in 24 hours. Yes, a thousand.
Lily Phillips, 23, made £2,000 in the first 24 hours of launching her account on OnlyFans
She has set herself the target of breaking a world record by sleeping with 1,000 men in 24 hours
All of which will be filmed and livestreamed via her account on OnlyFans (the adults-only online content provider) for her 36,000 subscribers to enjoy.
She has advertised it online with a picture of herself looking particularly fetching in a white lace camisole top accompanied by the strapline – ‘1,000 men in 24 hours. Male talent casting call. 18+ only. Location TBC.’ And, apparently, the men are flooding in.
‘I dreamed it up with my assistant. I can’t wait… it’s very exciting. It will be a world record. A real challenge!’ she says, as if we’re talking about climbing Everest.
The current record holder is a woman called Lisa Sparks who had sex with 919 men in Warsaw, Poland, in a day in 2004.
‘Imagine getting that far and not making the thousand!’ exclaims Lily.
Before we go any further – and probably it’s a bit late already – I should issue a health warning.
This piece is not for the faint-hearted. Or anyone with any remotely moral views on sex, fidelity, modesty, normality or holding anything back. And perhaps not for anyone with a Gen Z daughter and already worrying about their sexual hinterland. Or, for that matter, a son. Because, obviously, it takes two to tango. Or, in this case, a thousand.
But it is real. Horrifyingly real.
So real, that in late October Lily did a practice run – 101 men in 24 hours in a two-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, central London, that she’d rented on Airbnb.
‘That was a little warm-up – to limber up for the big one. Like doing a 10k before the marathon,’ she says. ‘And it is like a marathon! I carb-loaded the night before with a huge bowl of pasta.
‘It’s really tiring. Not just physically, but mentally – I like to be chatty and chirpy – to help them feel relaxed, because a lot of them are very nervous. It was a huge success, but I was so tired afterwards. I celebrated with a Nando’s and then slept solidly for 14 hours.’
If you’re reeling as you read on, it’s not surprising.
Talking to Lily is like bobbing into a parallel universe where everything is upside down. Where Gen Z bodies are for sale like sweets. Sex is nothing more than a numbers game. And parents – even grandparents, apparently – are ‘very supportive’. Lily’s mum is even her ‘head of finance’, for goodness’ sake.
Meanwhile, Lily herself, a bubbly, beautiful, articulate and immaculately mannered girl, chatters on and on in exactly the same perky tone as she did about her family Christmas, or her beloved dog Maggie – about how she graduated from posting sneaky peeks to full-blown porn on her hugely lucrative OnlyFans account. How she earns over six figures a month and employs a eight staff – all women. And how the only way to achieve the thousand will be with a human conveyor belt.
‘Ideally, we’ll do it in a big warehouse with two doors. I’m hoping a couple of seconds each at most – and on their way!’ she says in her sweet, girly voice, as if we’re talking about a gym work out.
For years now, we have been warned of the ‘pornification’ of society thanks to endless, free, online sites such as Pornhub, which tempt in young teens and give them a warped idea of sex.
Then in 2016, OnlyFans popped up in Essex and changed the landscape. Unlike porn sites, it is an online platform where ‘creators’ insist they are in control, charging followers a base subscription fee to look at their content, and then offering more explicit, ‘a la carte’ – usually, but not always, sexual content – through ‘tips’. The more you pay, the more you see.
It took off like a rocket.
Today the site has 305million users and over 4.1million ‘creatives’ – and in 2023 it generated a record $6.6billion (£5.2billion), of which the company takes 20 per cent. The creatives get the rest.
Which means that some – a teeny percentage, and mostly porn stars, rappers and pop stars – are making millions.
But not the rest, who are mostly young women who cite ‘female empowerment’ and ‘feminism’ as they sell photos and videos of, well, pretty much anything that will grab someone’s attention, in the hope of striking gold.
Just like Lily. ‘You have to stand out with unique content. You have to be different,’ she explains, as if we’re talking about coming up with a fun new TikTok dance. ‘Because there are so many people on OnlyFans.’
Hence the record attempt. All of which feels quite a stretch from her ‘picture perfect childhood’ in that pretty village near Derby where, as a little girl, she dreamt of running a wedding dress shop.
So how on earth are we sitting here today? What happened? How can she talk chirpily about having sex with 1,000 men as if it’s completely normal?
Lily goes a bit pink when I pry, but admits that she has already banked well over £2million
Bonnie Blue, whom Lily has collaborated with, outside Nottingham Trent University
Her parents worked hard, ran a cleaning company and made enough money to buy nice cars – including a Land Rover and a Porsche – and a few properties.
‘I think I got my work ethic and my creativity from my dad,’ she says.
Her elder brother is an ‘ethical hacker’ paid by companies to demonstrate flaws in their security systems. He worries about her safety – and that even the 100 men might have been a bit too much for her physically. He went to private school but Lily didn’t fancy that, so stayed in the state sector before heading off to Sheffield University to study nutrition.
So far, so normal. As was her sexual history at that stage.
She didn’t have a boyfriend until she was 17, and lost her virginity just before her 18th birthday.
‘I wanted it to be with someone I really cared about,’ she says.
It was only at Sheffield, where she couldn’t attend a single lecture due to the pandemic, that she embraced sex with gusto – particularly one-night stands – and launched her OnlyFans feed.
‘Back then, no one really knew about it,’ she says. ‘I’d wanted to do it for a while, but it felt slightly disrespectful to my parents to do it under their roof.’
She made £2,000 in the first 24 hours – ‘which is pretty good when you’re at university’ – and was hooked.
At first the content was pretty anodyne – cleavage, bikinis, cheeky glances.
‘But I was sort of selling sex to guys on my nights out without making any money, so I thought I might as well charge for it.’
So she started stripping off and getting a bit ‘spicy… doing solo stuff’. And a year ago, she graduated to porn.
‘It’s such fun,’ she beams. ‘I love it.’
But the money didn’t really shoot up. So she started dreaming up madder and madder schemes.
There was a competition in which the prize was sex with her – won by a Scottish chap called Kenneth whose girlfriend travelled down with him and waited in the next-door room.
‘He was so lovely, a DJ, he’s a friend now,’ she says.
She did some joint content with Bonnie Blue – another OnlyFans blonde who has made millions after working her way round Derby, Nottingham, Cancun and Australia wearing a sandwich board that read ‘bonk me for free, let me film it’, sleeping with students on vacation and videoing it for her content.
‘She grew up in a village about 20 minutes from me – how crazy is that, there must be something in the water! We even look similar though our views don’t quite align,’ she says.
‘I can’t remember her exact words, but it’s along the lines that “men deserve to cheat if their women don’t give them as much sex as they want”. I think that’s a dangerous point of view and could lead to domestic abuse.’
Then on October 19, Lily ‘did’ the hundred. Men travelled from all over. Two flew in specially from America. One from Sweden. Another from France. Bunches of friends drove hundreds of miles and slept in their cars. They chatted and joked in the waiting room. Some shared a beer in the street outside. Some were students. They all know who they are, but I doubt their parents do. Or their girlfriends, or wives, or children. What on earth were they thinking? Perhaps that is another article.
Each got exactly five minutes, before her phone alarm went off.
‘It was brilliant – my assistants were really good hosts in the waiting room with coffees and pastries and clapping people as they came back out. It was a great atmosphere and they were so lovely.’
Really – all of them? She’s being very generous, but there was no filtering system – just send in a photo with your ID and the first hundred were taken.
‘Any shape, any size, any race, any age, anyone,’ she says. ‘The oldest was probably in his 60s or 70s. I was looking at some of them thinking, ‘you could definitely be my grandad.’
And did that bother her?
‘No, not at all!’ she chirps.
She hasn’t dated anyone for two years, since her last boyfriend became too jealous
She claims she actively fancied about 30 per cent of them. ‘I was like: “Come back!”’
Which of course still leaves the rest.
Some full of bravado. A few were a bit pushy when their time was up.
‘There’s no one I said no to and I don’t think there would be. I think that would be quite cruel! Some of them were quite nervous and I felt quite protective over them and made it as personal and authentic as possible.’
Blimey. Listening to Lily chatter on and on, it’s easy to feel you’re going mad. That it is entirely normal to sleep with 100 men in a day, after they’ve queued up in their socks and Crocs, eating croissants and chatting with their pals, as they wait their turn. And they clearly think it’s okay, too.
At about 60 men, she nearly hit the wall.
‘It was all me and it was hard graft!’ she says.
But she did it and lessons were learned. About logistics, and timetabling and not to waste time as the men take off and put their clothes back on.
‘Next time, I want them to come in ready. I wanted them to have a good experience and be relaxed, but it was tiring doing all the chat,’ she says.
So for the record attempt, she’ll have four girls to make sure everyone has a good time – ‘which’ll be great content for them too, so they’re happy,’ she says.
Bloody hell, Lily! Life is not just about content. Not that she’s ever likely to agree with me on that.
But is she happy? ‘Yes!’ she beams.
Truly? ‘I love it. I’m doing what I love and enjoy and I’m making a career out of it. It’s my life. What’s wrong with that?’
Okay. And what about the thousand – is she nervous?
‘It’s a bit stressful with all the logistics, but there’s not much preparation – a good shower, a good night’s sleep. But other than that, it’s pure determination. I’m not daunted. I just want to complete it.’
Though she is a bit sad that there will be no official present from the Guinness Book of Records.
‘Apparently, they don’t do sex records, which seems a shame,’ she says.
Of settling down, she says: ‘I want to have a marriage like my parents’ and at least five children’
Meanwhile, the men will all wear condoms and have instant HIV tests, but no one pays. In return they agree to be filmed on her content. And if they don’t want their face on film, they can wear a balaclava.
Of course, with OnlyFans success comes cash – Lily goes a bit pink when I pry, but eventually admits that she has already banked well over £2million.
But it also brings fame. And not always when you want it.
There was one tricky encounter in a night club when a well-refreshed girl accosted her, furious that her partner had subscribed to her OnlyFans feed.
‘That was a bit awkward, but not my fault.’
And sometimes people yell ‘slut!’ at her in the street. Not that she cares.
‘I don’t know these people: why would I care about their opinion?’
Instead, she says, she feels empowered and happy – and while she recognises that it is not for the fainthearted, or vulnerable, or desperate, and perhaps anyone who does not have an astonishingly relaxed attitude to sex – she insists she is very grateful to OnlyFans.
‘Honestly, it’s changed my life. How I feel about myself, my confidence. I am 23-year-old woman who pays my own rent and earns good money. I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved – I’m a feminist, 100 per cent,’ she says. ‘Though I do sometimes feel a bit guilty, because I look at other jobs and think they’re so much more deserving of this money. But I guess that’s just life.’
After the last few sexual ‘challenges’, I’m almost afraid to ask what could possibly come next.
‘I’m going to have a little break,’ she says.
And after that? She hasn’t dated anyone for two years, since her last boyfriend became too jealous and it all went ‘very toxic’. In her 30s and 40s and 50s and beyond – does she want a steady relationship? Surely, she can’t have thought it all through?
But it seems she has.
‘I’m not stupid! Of course it will be tricky. Very tricky. That’s what held me back at the start. I know that 90 per cent of the population will not want me. But there’s another 10 per cent, and anyway I wouldn’t want to be with someone who doesn’t feel openly about sex.’
And does she want to settle down? ‘Oh yes, I want to have a marriage like my parents’ and at least five children.’
And with that, we call it a day.
Me, desperately trying to square this bubbly, chatty, funny and articulate girl from Derby who wanted to run a wedding dress shop with OnlyFans Lily, and still wondering how on earth it all happened.
And she, counting down the days to her cosy Christmas and family skiing holiday, before girding her loins to sleep with 1,000 random men in a single day.