You've been through a truly terrible time.. I wish things had been a little easier for you.

MR Clean MP Martin Bell has written an extraordinary letter of love to his long-lost prostitute stepdaughter.

Begging 30-year-old Jessica Sobel to contact him after a gap of nearly 10 years, he told her: "It's a pleasure to be in touch with you again, although I'd wish that the circumstances had been, for you, a little easier.

"You must have been through a terrible time...I was truly sorry for you."

Bell refused to criticise Jessica's sordid past as a Hollywood hooker, drug addict and porn star. Instead, he congratulated her on turning her bitter experiences into a book.

Then the former BBC war reporter told of his own turbulent decade, saying: "A lot of things have happened to me in the intervening years.

"I got involved in the Bosnian war. I was wounded. I wrote a book. I became a member of Parliament - exchanging one war zone for another." He signs off: "Please write. I'd love to hear from you."

The emotional handwritten letter on Commons note- paper touched Jessica's heart. At her Los Angeles flat, she said last night: "It was so sweet of Martin to write to me. I was really touched. His letter has given me hope.

"But at the same time it's made me sad because it reminds me of a much happier time in my life when he was there as a parent for me.

"I'm not proud of my life and feel I've let Martin down. He's so incredibly unjudgmental it makes me want to cry. It's my most cherished wish that I see him soon so I can explain what went wrong."

Bell, 59 - who was married to Jessica's mother Rebecca - said: "For years I've wondered what happened to Jessica. We just sort of lost touch.

"When I heard about her problems I was deeply worried. I had no idea any of this had happened to her. I remember her as very vulnerable and always tried to be there for her because we were so close.

"Who knows what a meeting will mean for us? Naturally, I'll help her if I can. I don't know what advice I can give. I just hope she's sorted her life out and we can stay in touch."

Bell - anti-sleaze MP for Tatton and father of daughters Melissa, 24, and Catherine, 22, by his first marriage to Helene Gordoun - met Rebecca when she was an ambitious TV news reporter for the US network NBC.

The couple wed in 1985. But the marriage collapsed after Rebecca contracted chronic fatigue syndrome. As a result, Bell lost touch with Jessica and her brother Mike.

Unknown to him as he jetted to troublespots around the globe, Jessica's life was spiralling into squalid despair.

After graduating from university she drifted to Beverly Hills to live with her lawyer father. She wanted to break into movies and invested in a pounds 3,000 boob job. But after a bit part in Baywatch she turned to full sex porn movies. And from there it was a short step to becoming a nude masseuse and pounds 500-a-night hooker who used cocaine and valium to deaden the pain of her life.

Jessica, who knew Bell closely for five years, said: "During an unsettled period of my life Martin was the only person I could rely on. While my mother was ill, he did everything. He was a parent to me in every sense of the word doing the housework, cooking meals, giving me advice - even vetting my boyfriends.

"Eventually my mother deserted both of us. But Martin kept telling me not to worry, that he was there for me and everything would be fine."

Jessica last spoke to Bell when she was 22 and he rang to tell her he was moving out. She said: "He used to say that if I studied hard and always tried to do the decent thing I'd be all right.

"But Martin isn't from Hollywood. And after he was no longer a part of my life I felt the pressure to earn a fortune. While working as a film extra I met a girl who told me where I could make some serious money - and I became a nude masseuse.

"I felt so low because all the customers were male and I had to provide `extras.' But I was making $1,200 a night until I was fired after refusing to have sex with the owner." The first time Jessica was paid to have sex was in a porn film. She said: "I decided there had to be better way of making money than having sex with a guy I didn't know in front of a film crew." So she became a full-time call girl.

Calling herself "Jewel", she soon built up a client list that included famous names.

She once had to perform a striptease while one of the world's top tennis stars looked on and enjoyed a bizarre love match - with himself. But Jessica hated her lifestyle. She said: "I was sleeping with 80-year-old billionaires and getting beaten up by rich young drug addicts.

"I took cocaine all day, then swallowed loads of valium. And every night before I went to bed I'd drink an entire bottle of a cold cure because it made me very out of it and helped me to sleep.

"I lived like that for five years. I often thought of Martin because I knew that if he was still part of my life I wouldn't have been in such a mess."

Jessica finally turned her back on vice two years ago. She said: "My real father died and my mother got in touch for the first time since she and Martin divorced. She told me I had to get my life back on track. I simply stopped being a call girl and started writing my book."

The book, called Once More With Feeling, lifted the lid on her torrid past. And after it appeared, it became known she was Bell's lost step- daughter.

Bell - known as The Man in the White Suit - first heard of the extraordinary story in November. And he immediately wrote to pick up the broken links.

Now Jessica has a new boyfriend who has helped her get off drugs and pick up the pieces of her shattered life.

She said: "I've finished with drugs and prostitution. Instead, I want to write more. As I've still got a nice figure I'd like to do some bikini modelling - but this time strictly legitimate!"

She added: "Other people might think it strange that a totally decent man like Martin could be a father figure to someone like me.

"I didn't realise he'd become Britain's Mr Clean. In fact when someone first told me he was an MP I thought he'd joined the Military Police!

"But it doesn't surprise me that he's made a name for being incorruptible. There's something very special about Martin. I'd never have forgotten him."

Article Details

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Author:	O'Sullivan, Kevin
Publication:	The Mirror (London, England)
Date:	Mar 19, 1998
Words:	1157
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