Why sex is still a thriving trade

CANDACE Bushnell, creator of Sex And The City, has made a fortune from penning tales about New York women in search of rich, powerful and sexy men. They never seem to quite find their Mr Big Love but they have plenty of adventures looking for him in the Big Apple.

So, has life imitated art for the writer who became famous when her column for the New York Observer was turned into a book, which was in turn snapped up and made into the hit TV series starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, Bushnell's alter ego?

Certainly, she looks every inch the glamorous uptown girl, an elegant blonde in stylish Prada cashmere sleeveless sweater, Burberry short red checked skirt and mile-high black silk shoes.

She also looks much younger than her 44 years, which comes as a surprise from someone who has had a huge number of late nights and early mornings partying among New York's elite over the last two decades. But there is not a hint of a black shadow underneath those bright blue eyes.

"One time, I reckoned that out of 365 days, I probably only stayed home for 21," she muses. "But I'm not the only one. Someone once said, 'What was the most difficult thing about writing Sex And The City?' and I said 'Writing with a hangover'.''

Her latest book, Trading Up, sees the reappearance of Janey Wilcox, who first emerged in her bestseller, 4 Blondes. Now a gold-digging underwear model making her way to the top, Janey stamps on any mogul who gets in her way. Except that it is still a man's world and she is destined to get her comeuppance.

The novel paints a sorry picture of the superficial friendships which come and go on the New York social scene. If you're a party insider, it's a great life but if you're not it's a lonely place. So how has Bushnell remained an insider for so long? She moved to the city as a struggling writer when she was 19 and initially shared an apartment with three actresses. The floor above was inhabited by call girls.

"Sometimes, I would leave the apartment and there'd be a big car out front and a couple of guys," says Bushnell. "I remember once coming out and a guy in a waiting car said, 'Hey, you'. I said, 'Are you talking to me?' He said, 'Yeah, get in the car. Are you from the third floor?' I said 'No' and he said, 'Sorry, wrong floor.' That's New York for you.'' She did some modelling and soon started mixing with designers, actors, photographers and artists, hanging out at Studio 54 and other fashionable clubs, and picked up some freelance writing work.

"When you are a journalist in New York, that's a law unto itself," she says. "People go out because it's part of their job."

The single life, she says, was exciting.

"Part of it is being that age - your 20s and early 30s. People go to New York to be successful. They go there to have a career they couldn't have in their small town, to find a better man than they could find in their small town and they go for the opportunities. It's a place of real possibilities."

Many thought she had found her ideal partner when she hooked up with Stephen Morris, a handsome British jet-setting venture capitalist, but after two years the relationship ended. Which shows that money and power can't always guarantee you love.

"I think it probably just petered out," she reflects. "We were spending less and less time together because of our schedules. Not all relationships lead to marriage."

But they remain good friends.

Then, last year, she met her unlikely match in Charles Askegard - the principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and ten years her junior - at a benefit party, shortly after she had broken up with Morris.

"I happened to go to the gala alone. I did what people always say you should do if you want to meet someone," she says.

"My first impression was that he was way too tall to be a ballet dancer. "He's probably the tallest ballet dancer in the world. My second thought was, he's 25, but then I found out he was 33, so that was okay."

By the end of the night, she had whisked him away to a nightclub, where she told him he was too tall (6ft 4in) and asked if he was gay, which he said he was not, on both counts.

He knew who Bushnell was. Wasn't that a bit intimidating for him? "No. If you're a guy and you're 6ft 4in, there's not a lot in life that you're afraid of," she asserts.

After a whirlwind romance, the couple were married seven-and-a-half weeks later, on July 4 last year, on a windswept Nantucket beach in a barefoot ceremony.

Before Askegard came along, Bushnell had almost resigned herself to staying single. "When you get married a little bit later in life, it's quite a wonderful surprise. I thought, the reality is I'm never going to get married, but I was okay with that. There are lots of different ways to be happy," she says.

At 44, she realises that she may have missed her chance of having children. "I think after a certain age, the biological clock faintly goes away. I was more worried about having children when I was in my early 30s. I think it's hard for women to accept this, but we don't always necessarily all want children. If I have a child, it's meant to be. If I don't have children I'm not going to be miserable about it because that's stupid," says Bushnell.

Having a child earlier would have been a mistake, she adds.

"When I was in my early 30s, I was really struggling and if I'd found a man and gotten married then, it probably would have been the wrong man."

Bushnell's novels, on the whole, paint a pretty bleak picture of rich and powerful men, many of whom are complete toads. They have characteristics she has seen rather than made up, she says.

"It's not that all their nice qualities go, but they realise their power and they don't have any qualms about using it. When there's a lot of money at stake, have you noticed how people's less attractive qualities come out?"

So what do New York men want out of women? "Men don't know what they want. That's something we feel in New York. "We see men in their 30s or 40s who have never been married but have dated fantastic women. What more do they want? Maybe they don't want anything," says Bushnell.

New York may be in her blood, but she was actually born in Connecticut, the daughter of a scientist, and had a middle-class upbringing. She has a house in the country near her old home where she escapes to when deadlines are looming.

But New York is never far from her mind.

She's bumps into Jessica Sarah Parker and the other Sex And The City actresses from time to time, usually at parties, but laments that none of them have the time to be 'ladies who lunch', as they do in the series.

Her next book will be another tale of a woman trying to make it in a man's world. "It will be about women trying to be successful. Life isn't just about finding a man anymore," she says. Not for Candace Bushnell, anyway.

Mike Amos is away.

Trading Up, by Candace Bushnell (Little, Brown) 12.99.