91Èȱ¬

Fifteen years after her hit TV series aired, Band Of Gold writer Kay Mellor has questioned whether prostitution should be decriminalised. Presenting a feature on 91Èȱ¬ One Yorkshire & Lincolnshire's Inside Out at 7.30pm this Monday (7 February), the Leeds-born writer says she finds it "depressing" that nothing much has changed to address the dangers of working in the sex industry since she first wrote Band Of Gold.

The TV series caused a storm in the 1990s by chronicling the lives of a group of women who lived and worked in Bradford's red-light district.

Kay says in the programme: "Surely [then] we, as a society, have to think again about how we deal with prostitution? We've had Peter Sutcliffe, we've had, now, Stephen Griffiths here in Bradford... isn't it time that we started to think out of the box? Try to think what else we could do? Perhaps, you know, we could talk about decriminalisation?

"It is 15 years since Band Of Gold but it is depressing for me to realise that not very much has changed. Prostitutes are women first: they are mothers; they are sisters; they are daughters – but unless things radically change, then meeting the next serial killer just becomes an occupational hazard."

Kay says that one of her motivations for writing the TV series was to give sex workers a voice, and in the programme she talks to a 32-year-old sex worker who is trying to escape the industry, plus a representative from the Bradford Working Womens Service who help sex workers, and vice squad officer Sgt Helen Metcalfe who argues that decriminalisation might not be the answer.

Sgt Metcalfe says: "I think currently if we were to decriminalise street prostitution that wouldn't make the problem go away because, when I talk about 'the problem', what I'm really talking about is the fact they are addicted to drugs in the first place. There are very few women out on the street now who work for any other reason than to fund a drug habit."

Kay also talks in the programme about what inspired her to write Band Of Gold and is reunited with one of the women who was the inspiration for one of the series' main characters.

AB2