Question time: Sam Roddick

Sam Roddick, owner of erotic boutique Coco De Mer and daughter of Anita Roddick, talks about sex toys, human rights and her mother

From the archive: Hannah Pool interviews Anita Roddick
Sam Roddick
Sam Roddick of Coco de Mer, an erotica shop. Photograph: Felix Clay Felix Clay/Guardian

What is your bestseller?

When you're providing something new in the sex market, it doesn't sell at first. People circle it like a cat, sniffing, edging towards it. A year later it will be your bestseller. People go from recoiling in horror to thinking "that's not so bad", to "that's kind of interesting, I'm going to buy it". It's an emotional process.

What do you wish people bought more of?

Simple: a lube. It has to be one of the best sex toys you can have - it's cheap, highly effective and safe and it assists you. I've got no interest in people spending a huge amount in the bedroom.

Then why are some of your items so expensive? You sell an £800 dildo for example.

All of them are handmade, in England, by artisans. I am not into mass production. I don't want to go to China, where I can't see the factories. I don't want to make cheap, throwaway items. I want people to buy ethically.

Why are your shops so intimidating?

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than revealing our sexual desire. We think that because we can talk about sex, we're liberated, but the deeper issues haven't yet been addressed - if they were, things such as sex trafficking wouldn't be on the rise.

How does making a profit from the sex industry sit with your campaigning on sex trafficking? Don't you see a contradiction?

They are two different issues: one is about sex and consent, one is about torture. One is about paradise, one is about hell. There is only one rule within sex, and that rule is simple: consent. Without it, you're talking about emotional torture and physical brutality. Sex trafficking has nothing to do with two consenting adults. I believe sex should be free, but it doesn't mean you can't accessorise. Bondage for Freedom is the activist arm of Coco De Mer. We work with human rights organisations such as the Helen Bamber Foundation, Reprieve, and the Angola 3 [Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox who have spent 35 years in solitary confinement in a rural Louisiana prison. Robert King was freed in 2001].

The Angola 3 was one of your mother's big causes. Are you taking on the mantle of her political activism?

I kind of inherited Albert Woodfox when she died; a week later I found out I was on his prison list. Out of anything I could have inherited it was the closest to her - [meeting him] almost revived her in a way no photograph or hairbrush could. When I met him, there was a transference of her passion to me; once you meet Albert and Herman, you realise that two men have been disappeared by the American establishment because they are visionaries, only interested in improving lives for people who are vulnerable and poor.

Did you feel pressure to become more vocal after your mother died?

No. I have always been vocal. My mum was a public figure so when she died we had to put our own grief in reserve and that was tough. What's beautiful about it was that, although she was missing as a parent a lot of the time, when she died, it was like all of the work she did came home.

In your 20s, you lived in squats and out of skips. What was that about?

I lived off nothing for four years. We'd go to organic shops and get all the misshapen oranges or cucumbers and carrots and cook for the homeless with a group called Food Not Bombs. I was living in a squat, wearing clothes
I got out of a free box, hanging out with dubious anarchic characters, not spending a penny.

What did your mother think?

She had a massive problem with it. In one interview, she said: "I've failed because my daughter lives out of a dumpster." She understood much later, but it took her a long time.

Were you rebelling against your upbringing?

My upbringing was very poor until I was 12. I lived with my grandmother, mostly, because my parents were working very hard. We lived in a terraced house with four lodgers. Then my parents' company became a huge financial success, and I went from being immigrant working-class to going to boarding school where everybody was wealthy. I had a massive problem with my parents' wealth, but I never had a problem with them. My mum, particularly, was one of my heroes. I always saw her sticking her neck out for her beliefs - she was inherently herself, she had a very clear agenda. That agenda didn't change.

For more about the Angola 3, visit