We meet the woman teaching aspiring ‘sugar babies’ how to find themselves an older guy with a VERY big bank account
Brook Urick's website has 591,2000 UK members, 79,000 of which are sugar daddies looking for 'babies'
WE’RE in a hot and sweaty basement bar in London, and a young woman from Las Vegas is dazzling a gaggle of protégées with tales of her life of luxury.
They’re here because they all want to have what she’s having — a sugar daddy with a very, very big bank account.
Brook Urick is sharing some tips on how they can bag the sugar daddy of their dreams.
Sipping warm Prosecco, they hang on her every word.
“You’re not paid, you’re gifted,” she explains. “Don’t say on your first date, ‘I want this much.’ Nobody wants to hear that.
“You’re not looking for money. You’re looking to be spoilt in ‘an elevated relationship’. You have to hint.”
Most importantly, and she can’t stress this enough: “You’re not an escort. You’re a sugar baby.”
Brook, 24, doesn’t mess about. “It’s a lonely world out there. The world is full of salt. It’s your responsibility to go out and find the sugar.”
The largest woman in the room nods knowingly. “I’ve met a lot of salt,” she sighs.
The aspiring sugar babies, from 18 to late forties, have one thing in common — all have joined Seeking Arrangement, a match-making website where Brook is a coach.
The site, “where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships”, is effectively an online market place where sugar daddies — and occasionally sugar mummies — with profile names such as “The Winner” declare their salaries, net worth and the kind of lifestyle budgets they’re willing to provide in exchange for lively company and good times with “babies”.
So far, it appears to be phenomenally popular, with a claimed 5.5million members in 139 countries.
The daddies pay premium rates to join — £50 per month – while the sugar babies join for free, posting sexy pictures of themselves beside profiles that state their lifestyle expectation.
These range from “substantial” to “negotiable”, or in the case of one “flirty, fierce transgender baby from Didcot”, “minimal”.
No one is officially selling sex.
Brook says: “If people want to be escorts, there are plenty of other sites for that.
“They’re on Seeking Arrangement for something different. It’s a very fine line — my role is to teach these girls the difference.”
Brook’s website claims 591,200 UK members, of which 507,000 are sugar babies, with 79,000 daddies and 5,200 mummies.
I ask how someone with a “regular, middle-class” upbringing got involved in sugar coaching.
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She explains how she got a job in the warehouse of an adult novelty firm while studying at the University of Nevada.
Doing the sex-toy stocktake gave her “an insight into how many different types of relationship there are out there. You realise they’re all weird.”
Brook has always been turned on by men with money.
She says: “Some women want to go Dutch — more power to you. But there are other girls who don’t. I always expect a guy to pay for me, because that’s how I want to be treated and that’s what I’ve come to expect.
“Then a friend told me about this dating site and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s a lifestyle about that?’ I was sugaring and I didn’t even know it.”
Money, she says, is just the life-enhancing culmination of all the qualities she finds attractive in a partner, including “ambition, intelligence and being organised”.
Brook adds: “That’s not to say I have never been out with a law student or a teacher.
"But at a certain point you realise that you can’t have a conversation with them, because there are things they don’t understand.”
Would she marry a sugar daddy? She says with determination: “Oh, I will, because that’s the type of relationship I seek out, and I’m not ashamed of that.”
Elsewhere, the babies are working the room, checking out the people behind the profiles.
Donna is what Seeking Arrangement would probably call a success story.
She is blonde and striking, with vivid violet contact lenses and the artificially plumped lips of the expensively groomed.
A few months ago she was working in a “crappy job” at a smoothie stall in Manchester.
Now, she and her best friend “sugar together”, and are each receiving an allowance of £3,000 a month from a jet-setting sugar daddy who puts them up, rent-free, in his Chelsea apartment, in exchange for threesomes on tap, whenever he visits for one or two weeks every month. Donna is 18.
She says: “It’s a sexual arrangement. The rest of the time we have the apartment to ourselves.” And the freedom to see other sugar daddies.
In two days, for example, she is due to fly first-class to a sex party in Sweden, hosted by a sheik who claims to belong to one of the Gulf royal families — she cannot remember which.
Donna adds: “He says I can go home any time if I don’t like it.”
And she reveals that another regular sugar daddy in his fifties organises evenings for lots of girls from the site at the same time.
She says: “He hires a room and invites his work colleagues along. It’s £1,000 per meet.”
Another aspiring sugar baby exclaims in disbelief: “£1,000? Wow, you’re living the dream! Most I’ve ever got is £200. How do you do it? I think it must just be down to luck, y’know?”
“Erm, yeah,” says Donna politely.
What has she learned? “You have to be cold-hearted, determined. You can’t cry.”
She then describes how her friend once made the mistake of falling in love with a sugar daddy.
Meanwhile poor Tina is having less luck. A sweet Welsh girl in her early twenties, with a pronounced speech impediment, she lacks the hardened glamour of the rest and is now looking for a sugar daddy who also fulfils all romantic expectations.
Last week she had a date with a banker — or rather, a man claiming to be a banker.
She says: “It was a Friday, but he kept talking about having to be up for work the next day. I think he lived with his mum.”
After dinner, she agreed to go back to his. The taxi dropped them off in a run-down part of North London.
Tina says: “He tried to take me down this dark street.” That’s when she ran. “He was really creepy. If I’d been drunk, I wouldn’t be speaking to you now.”
By now the cocktails are flowing and some of the other sugar babies are whooping like brides-to-be on a hen night.
Sharmaine, in her mid-twenties, challenges the others: “So come on, how old was your oldest?”
Then she proudly trumps them all: “Sixty-four! And he was the first man to give me an orgasm.
“My sugar daddy was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
The sugar babies find this hilarious, but Sharmaine, a very tall, slim girl with braces on her slightly buck teeth, wants to make a serious point.
She came from a broken home and left when she was very young.
She says: “I never had a father figure. I was always broke, I had to fend for myself.
“My sugar daddy was what was missing from my life. He taught me to sit up at the table.
“I used to dress like a hoodlum. Now I dress like a lady. He changed me into a butterfly.”
As soon as her teeth are straightened, Sharmaine plans to have work done on her nose.
She says: “All I ever wanted was braces. Once these are off, my smile’s good for ever.
“Then, after a nose job, I’m done with sugaring. I’ll get myself a nice 30-year-old.”
The idea of a sugar daddy providing much more than just financial relief is something that Seeking Arrangement is naturally keen to promote.
Brianna is an experienced sugar baby who claims to be 25, but could be in her late thirties.
She says: “They teach. Your sugar daddy is a mentor, a protector.”
She tells Sharmaine: “You’re not gold-digging, you’re goal-digging.”
The most common criticism of Seeking Arrangement is that it allows men to buy their way out of emotional commitment, but at least two of the sugar babies claim they have no need of financial support.
And Kati, a 21-year-old Estonian, suggests that is precisely the appeal for sugar babies like her.
She joined the site after having her heart broken by her former boyfriend and says: “Sometimes sugar daddies fade away too, and you do feel left behind, but it’s still not as bad as being rejected by someone you like.
“There’s no chance of a real relationship. It’s safer.”
She disagrees that it is verging on prostitution and says: “That’s when you have a client, you have sex and go. These are different.
“They are not personal relationships exactly, but you spend time together, talk every day. I think of them more as family friends who give me advice.
“I feel sorry for them. They tend to be really nice people, but they’re lonely.”
SUGARING: THE RULES
1. Money: Don’t say ‘I want this much...’ You’re not paid, you’re ‘gifted’ - Brook
2. Sex: You’re not an escort. There are other websites for that - Brook
3. Love: Be cold-hearted. Don’t cry. And don’t fall for your sugar daddy - Donna
4. Being dumped: It’s not as bad as being rejected by someone you like - Kati
5. Learn as you earn: My sugar daddy taught me to dress like a lady, he changed me into a butterfly - Sharmaine