On 11 February 1990, the Observer sat down with Hollywood madam Alex Adams (a pseudonym among many; her real name was Elizabeth) and her dozen Persian cats to explore the Tinseltown demi-monde and listen to her ‘drop names no magazine could print’.
Heidi Fleiss might be better known, but Adams preceded her (and indeed later claimed she had given Fleiss her start in the business). Lying on her bed, 56 and in poor health with ‘thinning hair’, Adams seemed fragile, but in the 1980s, ‘Alex’s Aviary: beautiful and exotic birds’, as her business card read, reportedly earned her ‘several million tax-free dollars’ stuffed under her mattress in her bedroom.
