From britain to bunny, p.1
From Britain to Bunny, page 1
Ballast Books, LLC
www.ballastbooks.com
Copyright © 2024 by Zoë Gregory
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.
ISBN: 978-1-962202-40-4
Published by Ballast Books
www.ballastbooks.com
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: Childhood
Chapter 2: Rebellion and a Baby
Chapter 3: Reaching Adulthood and Turning Things Around
Chapter 4: Modelling
Chapter 5: Sunset
Chapter 6: Risking It All
Chapter 7: The Playboy Mansion
Chapter 8: Partying with Hef
Chapter 9: The Girls
Chapter 10: Home Sweet Home
Chapter 11: Living My Dream
Chapter 12: First Christmas with Hef
Chapter 13: Hustling
Chapter 14: Temptation
Chapter 15: Making the Most of My Time
Chapter 16: Backstabbed Once Again
Chapter 17: Going South
Chapter 18: Final Mission
Epilogue
INTRODUCTION
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would go from being a single mother on welfare to living my best life in the Playboy Mansion with one of the biggest superstars in the world.
My story starts like so many others. I was a rebellious teenager, profiting from the rave scene, taking risks, and not suffering the consequences. When I set out to prove my love to my boyfriend, I finally had to face the music—but was also given the greatest gift of my life, in my beautiful son. This moment forced me to grow up. I began to take every opportunity I could to get through the trials and tribulations of single motherhood.
I had a dream, and I was determined. Having grown up in England, I wanted more than anything to emigrate to the US. I wanted something bigger, and Hollywood was the place to go. I wanted to get away from the life I was living before it was too late and to give my son a better life with better opportunities. While fate and luck played a big part in my journey, I am living proof that manifestation works—as long as you are willing to put in some work, too.
Even when I hit rock bottom and lost everything, I never gave up. I remained strategic and focused on my goals, and in the end, everything worked out in my favour. But it was Hugh Hefner who escalated my dreams—without Hef, I never would have dreamed big enough to get where I am today. Thanks to his influence, I have fulfilled more of my ambitions and goals, from competing in and winning fitness competitions to flight attending on private charter jets around the world to now writing my life story.
He handed me my freedom and set me up for the rest of my life.
Hugh Hefner and Playboy gave me something different from what other girls may have achieved through the company. It was more than being featured in a magazine; it was a path to a whole new life and future. The gratitude I have for being involved with the legendary company that will forever hold a legacy is immeasurable. I’m still living my dreams, but I will never forget where I came from.
I wanted to share my story with the many women who have a dream like mine or have experienced similar situations in life. No matter the cards you are dealt, what counts is how you choose to play them.
You can take the girl out of the tough streets of London, but you can’t take the tough streets of London out of the girl, and I tell it like it is. This is my story, with no bullshit.
CHAPTER 1
CHILDHOOD
As a youngster, I was fond of people-watching.
I kept to myself most of the time. I observed and interpreted the conversations between my parents. I observed how people’s emotions changed based on the words of others.
Born and raised in London’s Camden Town in the late 1970s, I was a pretty typical kid growing up. I did gymnastics on the weekends and enjoyed playing sports, getting quite competitive during events at school. You could say I was more of a tomboy, doing boys’ things. I enjoyed the challenge.
My parents were super cool, a very down-to-earth couple; they often smoked weed freely in the house. They were popular and had many friends, and I was always allowed around the adults in the house. I listened to their conversations and benefited from their great taste in music, which they always had playing. My father owned a great sound system and a large selection of vinyl records that he had collected over the years.
My mother was into fashion. She always had the nicest clothes and always had her hair and makeup done; she was a beautiful, well-groomed woman. She also competed in beauty pageants when she was younger. Since she had a great eye for fashion, as a side business, she would buy and sell clothes to her friends. She was an artist with an expert hand for drawing and beautiful penmanship. I was born on her birthday.
My father was a skilled handyman who worked on restoring exotic cars. He could fix anything and seemingly knew everything about every trade. He always had a solution to any problem. I really loved that about him. He was heroic to me. He was a genuine guy with a lot of different friends from diverse cultures. He was a bodybuilder during my childhood; he was very fit and had tattoos.
We always had nice things, including many exotic animals. We had fish tanks, snakes, and a couple dogs. I loved my father’s compassion for animals. My father was very fortunate, but sometimes he trusted the wrong people. We were raided a couple of times by the police. My parents would always tell me the police had made a mistake and raided the wrong house, but I knew more than they thought. I was a very observant kid.
My father had a temper and would often have aggressive moments, breaking things and shouting. I stayed out of his way when he got angry—he would take it out on anyone who got in his way. One time, I took all his records out of their covers, placed them on the floor, and proceeded to skate on them with my feet sliding from side to side. I paid the consequences for that. He had a heavy hand when I was naughty. He never hit me otherwise, but I sure did ask for it when I did get smacked. He didn’t take anyone’s shit.
I never wanted to be apart from my best friend, Nicky, who lived across the road from me. We did everything together. We always talked about our dreams of moving to Hollywood. We looked very much alike—everyone thought we were sisters, both blonde and pretty. I had a lot of friends who lived on the same street, and we remain friends to this day.
My mum made me pretty clothes on her sewing machine, so I would have dresses and skirts with frills that no other girls had. She would plait my hair to make it wavy and put bows on each side. She took a lot of pride in her family. We were always well presented and put together.
My mum submitted photos of me to a kids’ modelling agency. They were very interested in representing me. I was seven years old and enjoying school at the time.
During my years at primary school, my mum or a family member frequently picked me up during school hours to take me to auditions and castings that were sent from my modelling agency. It began to interfere with my schooling, and I was getting upset about missing my friends at school. I had been working a lot; I didn’t understand why everyone fussed over me being a child model. I had been regularly shooting catalogues for Mothercare, a clothing and product catalogue for mothers and children. Later, I shot a Horizon Holidays TV commercial. When I returned to school, all the kids talked about how they had seen me on the TV.
I asked my mother where the money was for all the work I had been doing, and we started butting heads about it. I protested and didn’t want to go on auditions anymore. I remember feeling resentful. My mother told me she used the money I’d earned to buy my clothes and school items, but I never believed her.
During my last years of primary school, I was rather destructive. My parents were arguing a lot as they would often be in bad moods. I had a new baby brother at home—Louie. I was seven when he was born, and we were not that close growing up. I think what was going on in the home made me act up in school. I felt left out and ignored, and I would act up a lot because of that.
My mother’s side of the family is Greek, and they were very much like the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding: loud, obnoxious, always cooking and forcing you to eat. My maternal grandmother, Dora, was a lovely, sweet, caring lady who was very protective of me. She taught me how to speak Greek fluently when I was nine years old. She was very wise. My aunty and uncle dabbled in the fashion industry too.
My father’s side was English and French. I didn’t see much of them growing up.
Secondary school was fun until homework became a challenge. That’s when I rebelled. I was always out of the house, always wanting to be with my friends, always absent from school. I had become quite popular from being in the modelling industry . . . I was overly friendly, and I had a lot of charisma. People would mistake that for being flirtatious. I got in many physical fights with other girls because they were jealous of me.
A group of friends and I hung around in Queen’s Crescent, and we experimented with a lot of different drugs. It was 1989 and I was fourteen, smoking cigarettes and weed, taking XTC and acid, and inhaling huffing gas. We were a tight group of friends and all still very young, but hardly any of them went to school. Most of the boys would
My mother gave me hell. She was an excellent judge of character and read me like a book; I think she knew me better than I knew myself at times. I was becoming out of control and wouldn’t listen to my parents at all.
When I was fifteen years old, my mum would get angry with me for staying over at my boyfriend’s house. I’m sure she knew we were having sex. My boyfriend and I were very much alike. We always had fun earning together. We were together for a while, on and off.
One day when I returned home from spending the night at his house, my mother’s instincts kicked in, and she accused me of being pregnant. She took me to the doctor for a pregnancy test. She was right: I was pregnant—three and half months. There wasn’t even a thought of whether I should keep it. My mother had already decided I was going to have an abortion; the situation devastated her. I think I was too young to get affected emotionally at the time, but it did affect me later in life and still does to this day. After I had the abortion, things changed between my boyfriend and me; we broke up even though we still had feelings for each other.
My mother finally told me if I was not going to continue with school, I needed to go and find a job, start paying rent, and help her out.
CHAPTER 2
REBELLION AND A BABY
I found a job as a junior at a local hairdresser’s shop a few minutes from where I lived. I quite enjoyed it; this is where I really got into beauty and taking more time and effort on my appearance. Learning about hair styling, I was soon colouring hair for my friends and family. It was the first time I had experienced having money in my pocket legitimately, money I had earned myself by working for it. I was feeling quite independent, which gave me a sense of maturity.
My best friend Nicky and I had been curious about going out to the clubs. We were now fifteen years old and so eager to go and have some fun.
We went to Kensington High Street to see a club one of our friends had told us about. We didn’t think we would get in, but we gave it a try; we had dolled ourselves up, looking older than we were. As it turned out, we had no trouble getting in. The club, Dejavous, was the place to be. We started going regularly. We also would go to another club in Camden Town called the Camden Palace. They held a rave every weekend put on by “Orange.” Nicky ended up getting close with the MC who performed there, so we were always on the guest list and able to go in the DJ box.
I ended up having the best times of my life at the Camden Palace with my friends, the drugs, the dancing, the music, the laser lights. Everyone knew everyone, and the music was always good since Orange booked the best DJs. The best thing about the new rave scene was it united everyone from all the areas of Camden. Until that scene arose, the different boroughs hadn’t gotten along. It was a “streets” rule to stay in the borough you came from.
By 1988, the rave scene was booming, and my friends and I would attend all of the raves at the Camden Palace, Orange at the Rocket, Sunrise, Biology, Telepathy, and many other venues. When we weren’t going out at the weekends, all we really had to do was smoke, drink, do drugs, steal motorbikes and joy ride, and go earning. We would go over to Hampstead Heath and watch the sun come up and go on crazy adventures whilst under the influence.
I had figured out that there was a profit to be made from selling XTC tablets at raves. I started to make fake XTC. I would buy zinc vitamin tablets, as they most closely resembled the real XTC tablet; then I would use a knife to carve a dove-shaped bird so they looked like Dove XTC tabs. I would coat them with nail-bite solution so it would give the bitter taste like real XTC. I was selling fake tabs for £20 each and selling five hundred or more a night. I never got caught, and I never had any comebacks fortunately.
Around this time, I started going out with Brad. He was in my circle of friends from my neighbourhood. He was a little older than me, and we would always walk home together from the Crescent hangout or from the Camden Palace. Brad was a hustler, a good earner, a pretty good criminal. He went out every day earning (stealing), so he always had something good to sell: car stereos, mountain bikes, cameras, mobile phones, jewellery, office equipment, you name it. He got caught one too many times and ended up in jail—always in the local prison—but I stuck by him. It was 1991. We were heavily involved by this time, and he was practically living with me at my parents’ house. I wrote to him and visited him regularly in prison. He had done nearly a year in jail when they released him.
My mother and father wanted to move to Cyprus for a while and wanted me and my younger brother to go too. My brother was still very young. I really didn’t want to go with them. I was too involved with my friends and Brad, and I wanted to stay in London. So I told my parents that I was not going and would stay and live at the house with Brad. They were not happy about leaving me behind.
They packed up and left for Cyprus while I was waiting for Brad to return from jail. He was finally released. We had really missed each other, and the year he was gone had flown by. He asked me to prove my love for him by having his baby. I felt secure with him that he would always be able to provide for us because he always had money from earning. I knew I would have to live with the risk of him getting caught again, always being on edge, not knowing if he’d come home in the evening or I would get a call from the nick (police station). I threw my contraceptive pills out of the window in front of him to prove I was willing to get pregnant and have his baby. Whilst trying for a baby, we continued to go to the raves, sell duds (fake XTC), and have a good time, though I stopped taking all drugs and stopped smoking and drinking once I came off the pill.
We were still making good money together and continued to. When I was around seven months pregnant, I was starting to feel a lot more tired and would stay home while he hustled. I saved up and purchased a car, and we applied for a council flat with Camden Council whilst still living at my parents’.
I had a great pregnancy; I never experienced morning sickness. I was just hungry all the time. I started working out while I was pregnant since I was gaining a lot of weight. I still hadn’t really finished developing my breasts. I think I was a late bloomer. I hated being so flat chested. Even though I had not fully developed my breasts yet, they hurt during the pregnancy and were so sensitive I couldn’t even touch them. I was hoping not to get any stretch marks over my body.
We had the best of everything for our child. I loved shopping for my baby.
I dreaded telling my parents that I was pregnant. I think my mother had an idea this would happen while they were away in Cyprus. She always had a sixth sense, but at least they were so far away that they couldn’t really do much. I finally gave them the news, and they were not happy with me. I know my mum wanted to be close to me while I was going through my pregnancy. At least my grandmother was always there for me, making sure the house was stocked up with food.
My mum returned to London to visit me and stayed by my side during the last month of pregnancy. She wanted to be at the birth to make sure everything went well. My contractions started in the late evening of 23 July 1992, and I gave birth at 12:45 a.m. on 24 July 1992. I was so grateful my mother was by my side. I had a natural birth, only receiving gas to help with the pain, and oh boy did I regret not having the epidural. Lewis was born seven pounds, twelve ounces; Brad was nowhere to be found. I was devastated he couldn’t be there for the birth. I later found out that he was at the Camden Palace, enjoying himself. His mobile phone didn’t work in the underground venue. I was so hurt, but soon I was too distracted with my beautiful baby boy to stay bothered about it.
Lewis came into my world. What a beautiful little thing he was. I think I really needed this in my life. It gave me a sense of direction, responsibility, and motivation. Thinking about our future, I was in awe. I couldn’t stop looking at him.
