The first issue of the Sunday Sport, published in September 1986. Photograph: David Fowler\/Alamy<\/p>\n
Its coverage of Banus coincided with a short-lived and ill-fated merger with its ailing rival, the Daily Star \u2013 the Sunday Sport was briefly rebranded as the Star Sunday Sport \u2013 and together they devoted countless column inches to the teenager they described as \u201cthe sexiest 15-year-old in Britain\u201d, measuring \u201ca fantastic 40-22-34\u201d.<\/p>\n
When Banus, from Hendon, north London, first appeared in the Sunday Sport, the newspaper pushed the law to its limits by picturing her semi-naked, her chest obscured only by her arms. The law at the time forbid the publication of indecent images of under 16s. The Sunday Sport insisted it was compliant with the rules as Banus was \u201cnot quite topless\u201d.<\/p>\n
It described 15 as being \u201cthe age of the nymphet\u201d and proclaimed Banus \u201cthe sexiest Lolita of them all\u201d. Fully topless pictures of Banus, from Hendon, north London, were duly published in the Daily Star when she turned 16 a month later. The Sunday Sport also encouraged its readers to call a premium-rate chat line to have a chance of hearing her voice.<\/p>\n
Almost 40 years on from her tabloid debut, Banus reflected on her glamour modelling career in a memoir, Dark Star, published earlier this year. \u201cThe Sunday Sport wished me a good [birthday] and told readers that I was legal, meaning that I could both show my boobs and that anyone who had sex with me no longer had to fear they might be arrested,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Banus, who had hoped to be a ballet dancer before being scouted by a glamour photographer, said she wept when she read the pieces published in anticipation of her birthday. One Daily Star piece included an account of an alleged incident in a changing room where she said she feared a teenage boy would sexually assault her. After she turned 16 on 11 October, she recalled that the Daily Star ran topless pictures of her \u201call week \u2026 always paired with some nonsense story about me being so proud of my tits, getting groped or fantasising about sex\u201d.<\/p>\n
This led to more work with Sullivan\u2019s magazines and newspapers, with some of her explicit shoots taking place in his former home in Essex, she said. In her memoir, Banus said that Sullivan told her she was \u201ca cut above so many models\u201d and \u201cdynamite\u201d when it came to selling papers.<\/p>\n
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If you don\u2019t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS<\/a>\/Android<\/a>) and go to the menu. Select \u2018Secure Messaging\u2019. <\/p>\n SecureDropIf you can safely use the tor network without being observed or monitored you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our SecureDrop platform.<\/a><\/p>\n Our guide at theguardian.com\/tips<\/a>\u00a0lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each.\u00a0<\/p>\n Show more<\/p>\n Sullivan\u2019s career in the adult entertainment industry has been thrown into sharp focus this weekend, after he announced he was standing down as a director and co-chair of West Ham to apply his \u201cfull energy and attention\u201d <\/a>to fighting what he described as \u201cfalse allegations\u201d concerning his personal conduct. The claims have apparently been gathered as part of a joint investigation by BBC Panorama and the Times and are due to be published on Monday.<\/p>\n Sullivan did not elaborate on the accusations he is facing, but said: \u201cAfter a lifetime spent building businesses in the adult industry, in which I have met thousands of women, it is sadly inevitable that a small number of improper conduct claims are being made against me.\u201d He did not respond to follow up queries from the Guardian.<\/p>\n Despite her condemnation of the newspapers she featured in, Banus has always stopped short of criticising Sullivan personally and has never made any allegations about his behaviour towards her. In her book, she said: \u201cWhile opinions on him may vary, I say with honesty that he has shown me courtesy and kindness in our dealings.\u201d After the news of Sullivan\u2019s departure from West Ham broke, Banus reiterated that he had \u201calways treated [her] with respect and courtesy.\u201d<\/p>\n While the relationship between the Star and the Sport lasted just eight weeks \u2013 it was reported that advertisers and journalists began to vote with their feet, largely in protest at the seedy influence of Sullivan \u2013 he was undeterred. The Sunday Sport and its sister paper, the Daily Sport, continued for more than 15 years to celebrate the 16th birthdays of teenage girls by picturing them topless.<\/p>\n The images were often published alongside the newspapers\u2019 famously outlandish stories. (They claimed a London bus had been found at the south pole, and that aliens had turned a man into a fish finger.) Some teenage models became staples of their pages for years to come, but others retreated from the limelight, bruised by the sudden exposure to the sleaziest end of Britain\u2019s newspaper market. Some young women were encouraged to share details of their supposed sexual experiences, which several later alleged were exaggerated or simply made up.<\/p>\n On 3 July 1994, the Sunday Sport pictured a bikini-clad Linsey Dawn McKenzie, from Wallington, south London, beneath the headline: \u201cPlease print my boobs when I\u2019m 16.\u201d It told its readers that \u201cstunning schoolgirl\u201d McKenzie, who went on to be one of the country\u2019s most high-profile glamour models, was 15 years, 10 months, three weeks and four days old \u2013 meaning there were just under six weeks to go until her milestone birthday. It said that for \u201clegal reasons\u201d it wouldn\u2019t show her fully topless until she was 16.<\/p>\n McKenzie, who recently retired from glamour modelling after more than three decades, featured in the newspaper every week until she turned 16. As the weeks ticked past, it encouraged its readers to draw pictures of how they imagined McKenzie would look topless and printed its favourites. It dished out coupons so its clientele could pre-order copies of its 14 August edition, where it was promised McKenzie would reveal all.<\/p>\n \u201cHere she is at last, folks,\u201d the newspaper said, when the day finally arrived. \u201cLovely Linsey Dawn McKenzie \u2013 sweet sixteen and stripped bare for YOU.\u201d<\/p>\n Sullivan with a dummy copy of the Sunday Sport in August 1986, a month before its launch. Photograph: Landmark Media\/Alamy<\/p>\n On 17 May 1998, it was Zoe Parker\u2019s turn. Parker, who had been scouted just weeks earlier when her stepfather, Bob, took her to a pornography fair, appeared topless in the Sunday Sport next to the headline: \u201cI\u2019m sweet 16 and I can\u2019t get enough.\u201d The accompanying article was replete with details about her supposedly outrageous sex life. The ensuing furore saw Parker, living in Stamford, Lincolnshire, expelled from school.<\/p>\n The next year, Parker told the Sunday People that she had been coerced into glamour modelling by Bob and that it had driven her to the brink of suicide. \u201cI was lonely, frightened and couldn\u2019t carry on,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t take any more and I thought the only way was to kill myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Parker later claimed that some of the things she had said in the media about her sexual experiences were \u201crubbish\u201d but alleged she was encouraged to invent stories by her stepfather who thought it \u201cgreat publicity\u201d. For his part, Bob said he had \u201conly tried to encourage my daughter to do what she wanted to do\u201d.<\/p>\n The Sport newspapers also profited from adverts for videos involving 16-year-old girls well into the 00s. In 2002, they ran a series of promotions for \u201cincredibly hardcore\u201d pornographic videos involving \u201cbarely legal\u201d teenagers, some of whom they claimed were in school uniforms or had been filmed having sex for the first time.<\/p>\n One of the last 16-year-old models to grace its pages was Cherry Frampton, from Buckley, north Wales, who appeared under the name Cherry Dee. Scouted at 15, she first appeared topless in the Sunday Sport on 10 August 2003, next to the headline: \u201cHappy 16th bare-day\u201d. An advert in the Daily Sport the previous day, showing Frampton in lingerie and suspenders, said: \u201cShe\u2019s sweet 16 and just left school, her boobs are 32E and still growing. Tomorrow, only in the Sunday Sport, she\u2019s getting them out!\u201d<\/p>\n At 20 years old, six months after being crowned Miss Sunday Sport 2007, Frampton gave up glamour modelling to train as a nurse. Speaking about the glamour industry more generally, she later told the Wales on Sunday newspaper that she was concerned about some models openly doing cocaine on shoots, adding that, for some of her peers it was a gateway to sex work. \u201cLoads of them worked as strippers, in lapdancing clubs and as escorts, some of them even selling sex,\u201d Frampton said. \u201cI know a lot of them were tempted into porn but I wasn\u2019t hungry for all that.\u201d<\/p>\n A change in the law in 2004 \u2013 making it illegal to publish indecent images of under-18s \u2013 sounded the death knell for Sullivan\u2019s countdown to 16. However, for several years, the internet has been awash with rumours about how he treated both the young models who were handpicked to adorn the Sport\u2019s pages and other women and girls he came into contact with.<\/p>\n Sullivan is a man who has been making money from the sex industry for decades. Born in Cardiff in 1949, he moved to Hornchurch, Essex, at the age of 11. After graduating with a degree in economics from Queen Mary College, University of London, he began selling explicit photos via a small mail-order business he established in the east end of London in the early 1970s. A string of sex shops and pornographic magazines followed.<\/p>\n \u201cI was incredibly lucky, because I was getting raided by Scotland Yard weekly, but we became very chummy with them,\u201d Sullivan recalled in a Channel 4 documentary, broadcast in 2024. \u201cThe head of the obscene publications squad came to see me one day and said: \u2018I\u2019m going to help you. Now, as long as you avoid bondage, you won\u2019t face prosecution.\u2019 That allowed me to do things other magazines weren\u2019t doing. We charged on, and destroyed the market.\u201d<\/p>\n By 25, Sullivan was a millionaire, and decided to branch into films. The first, and most successful, was 1977\u2019s Come Play With Me, starring Sullivan\u2019s then girlfriend, Mary Millington. She took her own life in 1979, after a series of raids on a sex shop she operated in south London, saying she felt \u201cbeaten\u201d by the police. She left a suicide note for Sullivan, asking him to push for more pornography to be legalised. Sullivan continued to distribute pornographic footage of her after her death, apparently in tribute to her.<\/p>\n Sullivan described Come Play With Me as \u201ca Carry On film with tits and bums and pubic hair\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI had made a pile of money and I thought, I fancy making a movie for a bit of fun,\u201d he told Channel 4. \u201cWithin a week, we were filming.\u201d<\/p>\n Suzy Mandell, left, and Mary Millington, right, promote the film The Playbirds at the Moulin Cinema in Soho, central London, in 1978. Photograph: Landmark Media\/Alamy<\/p>\n Come Play With Me was marketed as the \u201cstrongest sex comedy film ever produced and distributed in Britain\u201d. The press reported at the time that some actors went on strike because the final cut was far more explicit than they had anticipated.<\/p>\n As Sullivan\u2019s notoriety grew, so did his apparent demands on the young women he encountered. Several have since spoken publicly about how he would expect sexual favours in exchange for work. Vicki Scott, a former glamour model and Marilyn Monroe lookalike, recalled her first encounter with Sullivan in the late 1970s, in an interview with the Sunday People.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll never forget when I was about 19 and I went to see him for the first time about a magazine job,\u201d Scott said, speaking in 1987. \u201cAfter telling me to strip off, he tried it on and I would not have it. He said: \u2018That\u2019s how it is if you want to work with me.\u2019\u201d Scott, then 29, told the newspaper that she had tried to warn other aspiring models about Sullivan. \u201cI\u2019d tell the girls: \u2018Look, you can see Dave, but you\u2019ll probably have to sleep with him,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n At the time, Sullivan did not address Scott\u2019s comments directly but said he was declaring \u201cwar\u201d on the Sunday People, and reportedly told its journalists:\u201d \u201cIf your editor wants to delve into my private life, I will delve into his.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1981, the News of the World was contacted by Sue Stewart, a 24-year-old secretary who said she had answered an advertisement for a \u00a3150-a-night job carrying out \u201cpromotional entertainment work\u201d. In an interview with the newspaper, Stewart said Sullivan had asked her to undress, then tried to have sex with her. When she refused, he reportedly said: \u201cIf you aren\u2019t going to do anything, it\u2019s like a boxer without any training. I don\u2019t know what you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n The News of the World then asked an undercover reporter, Tina Dalgleish, to respond to a similar advert. When she arrived at Sullivan\u2019s then home in Chigwell, Essex, she said he wanted to know whether she was \u201cinterested in doing anything sexually\u201d for money.<\/p>\n According to Dalgleish, Sullivan said: \u201cWe\u2019re not going to persuade you to do anything you don\u2019t want to do. But do you want to get up to no good or not? I mean, my time is valuable.\u201d She said he invited her to his bedroom, where he suggested they have sex so he could \u201cjudge her performance\u201d. Dalgleish wrote that she made her excuses and left. Sullivan does not appear to have commented on the story at the time.<\/p>\n The next year, Sullivan was convicted of living off the immoral earnings of prostitutes after two London saunas he operated were raided by police. Mark Killick, a journalist who wrote a book about Sullivan published in 1994, said the women working there were \u201cpoorly paid and exploited\u201d. Sullivan was ordered to serve nine months in prison, but was freed after 71 days when he successfully appealed against the length of his sentence.<\/p>\n After his release, Sullivan tried to distance himself from the more extreme fringes of the sex industry. He set his sights on two longstanding ambitions: owning a newspaper and a football club.<\/p>\n The Sunday Sport was launched in 1986, followed by the Daily Sport in 1991. As most businesses would not advertise in the newspapers, their pages were filled with promotions for premium sex chat lines, reportedly controlled by Sullivan and staffed by some of the models who featured in the newspapers.<\/p>\n Sullivan sold his stake in the Sport newspapers in 2007 in a deal that earned him about \u00a340m, but bought back some shares in 2011 in an apparent effort to save them after the company entered administration.<\/p>\n Karren Brady and Sullivan after the Birmingham City takeover in 1993. Photograph: Getty Images<\/p>\n His big move into football came when he took over Birmingham City in 1993 with his business partner David Gold, whose family ran the Ann Summers empire. To the astonishment of the footballing world, he appointed 23-year-old Karren Brady, an unknown Sport advertising executive, as its managing director, launching a career that would culminate in a peerage and a starring role alongside Alan Sugar in the long-running BBC series The Apprentice. She severed her decades-long business relationship with Sullivan in April, resigning as vice-chair of West Ham United<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is not the first time there have been questions surrounding Sullivan\u2019s behaviour. In July 2008, he was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a 25-year-old actor who had visited his mansion in Theydon Bois, Essex. He denied the woman\u2019s claims and, after an investigation lasting almost three months, the police decided to take no further action in light of advice from the Crown Prosecution Service.<\/p>\n In a later interview with the Birmingham Mail, Sullivan claimed the encounter was consensual. \u201cAnybody can make an allegation against anybody in this country and the police have to investigate,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m a rich person, so I\u2019m a target for this sort of thing. That is the world we live in.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Screengrab](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780936691_696_604.jpg\")
Natalie Jay Banus, pictured in a podcast last year. Photograph: YouTube<\/p>\n