The tense expectancy in Greenside’s small Ivy Studio as Melissa Todd walks in and simply gapes at her audience is palpable — and she seems to revel in the build up. But the air is almost immediately transformed by her first words, delivered with the soft spoken ease honed through years of experience. In her opening pre-talk, the dominatrix expertly takes us through hard and soft limits, laying out both her plans for the evening and her expectations of our behaviour. It is through such disarming honesty that she gradually — and safely — draws her audience into the seductive cocoon of intimate, hilarious storytelling that is Gag Writer.
In the following hour, the show will refreshingly weave together delightful and poignant anecdotes from Melissa’s life as a sex worker with performative retellings of her most hysterical client encounters — straight from her best ‘Love It!’ columns, compiled in her latest book. But most interestingly, the Ivy Studio will witness what can perhaps best be described as a love letter to the job and community that, for 30 years, have brought Melissa happiness and fulfilment.
On stage, one rule is soon made clear: truthfulness is a hard limit, completely non-negotiable. And there is one decisive, unwavering fact about the show that this dominatrix wants to make explicit from the get-go — one she passionately repeats to me as we sit down for a chat at an outdoor table on a decidedly un-sunny Leith Walk: “I’m not an actor […] This is genuinely me. It’s not a character; this isn’t a theatre piece.”
The true Melissa, who by her own orders is to be addressed as Miss Matthews by her audience, appears on one hand as a strict ruler. Throughout the show, her cane remains within titillating and fearful proximity, occasionally tilted as if she knows exactly how much power it holds in her agile, proficient hands. So sit up straight, and answer when called upon.
But that same woman surprises her audience with a startling vulnerability, in a raw, comedic exposition of her whole self. The dominatrix, the columnist, the book author, the daughter, the mother, the porn actress, the sex-positive activist: all are simply Melissa Todd — now also a performer giving us a privileged and often hilarious glimpse into her life.
Sex is brilliant, it’s so fun. It’s really good for you. We should all have as much sex as we possibly can.
Such an absence of compartmentalisation is a rare quality in anyone, and perhaps especially unexpected in a sex worker, whose work is so often presumed to be an inconvenient hustle born of necessity — something to be kept neatly separate from the rest of life.
Melissa shows us the opposite. It is clear from her show that, in sex work, she found community and a space for self-expression. Her sex work is intertwined with her family life, her writing life, her sense of self. It is as multifaceted as she is.
No wonder, then, that when I ask what she wishes everyone knew about sex work, she cannot point to one single thing. Instead, she offers a long and varied list of what it can be: “secretarial” and “boring”, but also “fun”, “sweet”, “charming”, “domestic”, and even “innocent”.
She finishes by highlighting “how people just leave feeling happier about themselves, just happy with the world, and on a massive high.”
I tell her I felt the same way when I left her show. One of the moments that no doubt contributed to that feeling was her loving description of being caned for the first time. The genuine passion pouring out of her took me by surprise, and left a heartfelt impression.
Such a moment is also proof of what a well-crafted, well-balanced comedy act can provoke when it understands that, although the most subversive effects often come from a good joke, they can sometimes come from taking an easily jokable matter rather seriously. Melissa’s intent is all over that crystal-clear delivery; the proficient storyteller knows exactly what she wants to convey.
“We need kink liberation, that’s my feeling,” she tells me. “So, I think [it’s important] standing out and saying, ‘I love pain, I love it.’ And you know, why shouldn’t you? It’s really fun.”
She goes on: “It’s a really important point to make because so many of my kinky friends won’t talk about it outside kink circles. And also, they do feel this deep sense of shame. I know so many people who felt suicidal because they’re kinky, you know, particularly from a religious or very moral upbringing.”
We need kink liberation. I think [it’s important] standing out and saying, ‘I love pain, I love it.’ And you know, why shouldn’t you?
She emphasises that kinksters are simply people who embrace a particular way of life and deserve to be treated with respect — a simple, agreeable enough formulation, one might think. Yet the stigma she is pushing against is neither merely anecdotal nor entirely overcome. Her point sits, in fact, in uneasy opposition to the World Health Organization itself.
Only in 2019 did the revised 11th edition of the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) remove sadomasochism from its classification as a mental health condition. Yet it stopped short of fully abolishing the possibility of diagnosis, retaining it where such interests “cause distress in the individual beyond the social consequences” or pose “risk of injury or death to the individual or others”. Such continued pathologisation of atypical sexual interests found on ICD 11 reflects “social rather than scientific” considerations; its critics concluded.
And if there’s someone working overtime, and to prolific ends, to push back against such derogatory social perceptions, that person is Melissa Todd — and not just by bringing fifteen glorious performances of Gag Writer to Edinburgh’s Fringe. The 2026 Sex Positive Influencer of the Year has brought her case before God himself. “I’m a church goer, so I gave a talk at my local church,” she tells me. The talk was on Kink and Christianity, a connection she had never given much thought to herself before the invitation but immediately felt compelled to address given its clear importance: “A lot of kinks just seem to come from religious backgrounds and they suffer shame in consequence.”
A candid summary of her take? “You know, Jesus said nothing about what to do with genitalia. He had bigger things on his mind”. Or, in a formulation befitting a cutting writer: “Tie people up and believe in God, it’s fine. It’s all good. I’m confident Jesus doesn’t care.”
It all may have started at her inclusive local church, but she is now set to give a talk at Greenbelt Festival and has even attracted the attention of The Telegraph. She tells me she’s also been to women’s institutes and Rotary clubs, and plans to keep opening up conversations wherever they are needed — particularly in places where people may hold prejudices. She’s decidedly not one to shy away from a challenge:
“[At the church] I did get a heckler at the back who was saying I was disgusting, but I quite enjoyed that. I worked with that. […] I got lots and lots of abuse on the Telegraph [too], which is fine; I’ll take it. I take that as a compliment, you know.”
It may well be that she “likes to shock” or is “a terrible show-off”, as she herself claims, but that such tendencies co-exist with a genuine and passionate urge to speak up for necessary matters is something we are all better off for.
Particularly lucky are the ones who get to experience her show-off streak in Gag Writer — where, mind you, it may be at its peak. The storytelling brilliancy of her Fringe enterprise will have you titillating through laughs, and leave you to a wholesome heart, filled with some of the abundance Melissa has gathered through 30 years of joy and fulfilment found in sex and kink.
“Sex is brilliant, it’s so fun. It’s really good for you. We should all have as much sex as we possibly can.”
Main image: Melissa Todd
