An astute historian of New York prostitution might have heard a small bell ringing in their head upon reading the name of the woman accused of arranging prostitutes for Eliot’s Emperors Club VIP: Tanya Hollander. You see, New York’s most notorious prostitute (and madam) ever, the Happy Hooker, was named Xaveria Hollander. Was it now a family business? We called the old girl in Amsterdam to check.

“No, she’s not my daughter,” Hollander tells us from what she refers to as her “bed and brothel” on Amsterdam’s Gold Coast. “But it’s a wickedly chosen nom de plume.” (We prefer to think of it as a "nom de poon.") Was the Happy Hooker herself shocked by the news of Spitzer’s dalliances? Not really, save for the prices being bandied about. “Is that what they get paid these days?” she asks, referring to the $5,000 allegedly earned by Ashley Alexandra Dupré. “I was in the $100 bracket.”
Let's talk quality of clientele. Is Spitzer really that big of a deal? Who did Hollander meet in the boudoir? “I had my dealings with the White House,” she says. “But it was more discreet. Newsweek offered to pay me a lot of money if I’d admitted that Sinatra was my client. But I never talked. My affairs we’re never sleazy. I might have mentioned something about a crooner from New Jersey, though….”

Hollander has written eighteen books since her seminal tome in the seventies, in addition to writing the "Call Me Madam" column in Penthouse from 1973 to 2005. Coming soon to a bookstore near you: The Happy Hooker’s Guide to Sex—69 Orgasmic Ways to Pleasure a Woman, from New York’s very own Skyhorse Publishing. We're the hooker capital of the world! —Duff McDonald