DESPITE a six-year jail term for fleecing his victims out of millions, Swiss gigolo Helg Sgarbi [pictured] continued to look like the cat that got the keys to the cream factory. No wonder.

He had not only walked away with a relatively light sentence for fraud, attempted fraud and attempted blackmail, he refused to disclose where his £8m in loot is hidden, meaning a nice pension when he is free at 50. Sgarbi, few will be surprised to learn, is a former banker.

What’s amazing is that he managed to snare women despite looking like the Mr Bean of gigolos. A puny streak of duplicity, he spoke six languages and could lie fluently in all of them. As he told police, he got away with emotional murder because he could “read women like a map: everything is signposted, each turn in the road”.
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It’s a sad story of lonely females yearning for affection at any price. Yet we’ll brush such thoughts aside because they are, quite frankly, too depressing. Instead, women should see the Sgarbi case not as an insult but as an opportunity to seize control of the sex industry for their own benefit. Okay, it may not be the acme of feminism as we were led to understand it, but we need something to occupy ourselves while waiting for equal pay.

How much nicer the sex industry would be if women were in charge. No more tacky magazines filled with dead-eyed types wearing flammable underwear. In their place pictures of strapping bucks in cashmere jumpers and well-tailored trousers, doing exotic acts such as unloading the dishwasher. Red-light districts would become conservation areas, with men invited into cars strictly for nice chats only.

In adult films, plumbers who arrived with large wrenches would actually unblock the sink for a reasonable fee. Movies with titles like Red Hot Love would turn out to be innocent capers involving Scots couples who cranked up the central heating so they could make love without socks on just once in their lifetimes.

It’s all a pipe-and-slippers dream though. Women don’t have the heart to be porn barons because they take feelings too seriously. Which reminds me of a radio interview I heard recently. In it, a male escort said one of his “ladies”, a widow, told him that sex was just a long way round to a cuddle. In the case of the loathsome Sgarbi, it proved an awfully expensive journey for some.