BBC Panorama investigation lays bare the sleazy world of pick-up artists bootcamps where men are taught to pressurise teens into sex and ‘same day lays’
A man with a backpack and a cocky swagger is brazenly hitting on women in the street, eventually luring one back to his flat for what he calls a “same-day lay”.
He makes an audio recording of them having sex then shoots some secret video of the woman asleep with an unused condom still in the packet beside her on the bed. Later he uploads the recording onto his YouTube channel.
“I just bust a nut or two in a random same-day lay. It was a lot of last-minute resistance I had to come through,” boasts the paunchy man who has posted more than 250 online videos, many of them bragging about his sexual conquests.
Consent doesn’t seem to be a big concern for ‘Addy A-Game’, real name Adnan Ahmed, who says: “Remember they [women] want you to take the lead. Remember this is not rape. Listen to her actions, her body, not her words.”
Notorious Ahmed – who is now behind bars after being convicted of harassing victims – sells what he says are sure-fire secrets to picking up women.
He is one of several predatory men featured in the shocking BBC documentary Panorama: Secrets of the Seduction Bootcamp.
Only men know rules of sick game
The programme goes undercover at a so-called seduction ‘boot camp’ where picking up women has been turned into a game and where the lines of consent can be blurred. Only the men know the rules: the women don’t even know they’re taking part.
It’s known as “game” to the brash male pick-up artists who harass women on the streets then post intimate footage which they or their friends have secretly filmed.
“The reason you’re doing it is to get laid. Only the brave get laid. You will get a close. You will get numbers and that’s what number farming is,” says Ahmed.
He is leading a group of sexual opportunists based in Glasgow who teach pick-up techniques with their own unique names such as The Cold Approach – stopping women in the streets to get as many phone numbers as possible.
Preying on teenagers
What he’s teaching is part of the global business of Game: from America to India to Australia, the seduction industry is worth an estimated £80 million.
Pick-up coaches sell lucrative courses – known as boot camps – on how to sleep with as many women as possible, as quickly as possible.
The epicentre for pick-up artists in the UK is London, where a weekend course can cost up to £1,500 and a week’s course up to £4,000.
The young men on these courses hit the streets of London with their coaches for a game where innocent, unsuspecting women don’t even know they’re being played – often mere teenagers being approached by predatory and persuasive older men.
Time after time these men approach strangers and chat them up in often secretly recorded conversations which they later upload to their YouTube channels for the world to see.
And it seems nowhere – and no one – is safe as they target clothes shops because they’re an “ideal hunting ground” for honing their pickup skills.
Paywalled pickup vids
Experienced London-based pick-up coach Eddie Hitchens, 34, runs Street Attraction, which has its own YouTube channel of ‘in-field’ videos made via covert recordings.
Street Attraction has more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers and sells residential courses in Eastern Europe with men travelling from all over the world to take part.
Approach to Lay is Hitchens’ paywalled website where he promises to teach seduction techniques leading all the way the bedroom.
Visitors to the Approach to Lay page can pay a £47 fee to watch a secret recording of Eddie picking up an 18-year-old. From a cold approach on the street he takes her to a coffee shop and finally to the bedroom, where he apparently secretly records the sound of them having sex.
“I’m Eddie, I’m a heterosexual sex addict and I’ve been doing game since 2005 and been coaching since 2011,” he tells his six eager boot camp students as they hit the streets of London intent on seduction.
From the recently single to experienced pick-up artists, each of these students has paid £600 to learn more about game.
Twisted tricks to get women naked
Their first lesson is The Cold Approach – how to stop women they don’t know in the street and convert that random approach into a sexual encounter.
All weekend, Eddie and the other coaches suggest their students approach teenage girls.
The undercover reporter says to Eddie “She’s too young for me man”. Eddie replies with “Doesn’t matter. Even if she’s underage it’s not illegal to stop someone.”
When the reporter refuses, Eddie says “that was a good target”.
His fellow coach, Richard Hood, advises: “When you get to the apartment, tell her to take her shoes off as soon as you walk through the front door and you start taking your shoes off. It’s the first part of escalation. You need to get naked.”
Worryingly, he says that men are sometimes ‘too preoccupied’ with consent.
He certainly seems to know every trick in the seduction book. In a video called Picking Up Girls in Slovakia, uploaded onto YouTube, he secretly recorded himself having sex with a woman he’d just met.
“Girls who haven’t had sex for a while are usually easier to seduce than girls who have sex on a regular basis,” he says, boasting about how he’s manipulated situations and overcome ‘last-minute resistance’ to get what he wants.
‘I was terrified… it’s disgusting behaviour’
Dr Rachel O’Neill from the London School of Economics has studied the world of seduction coaches for over a decade, noting how they film interactions with women on streets, on dates and in the bedroom.
“I have asked men about this practice and they were very nonchalant about it,” she says.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon takes a dim view, expressing her horror at the practice of ‘gaming’ earlier this year in a speech to the Scottish Parliament following a BBC investigation.
Several women came forward to complain after that investigation to complain that they had been the victims of so-called gaming.
Ahmed was arrested and charged with harassment two days after the BBC expose.
One of those women, 17-year-old Beth, says: “I had to stay on the phone to my Mum immediately after I got away from him as I was terrified…more awareness needs to come to disgusting behaviour like this.”
Ahmed hit on Beth on a dark November night shortly after she left work in Glasgow.
“He approached me and started making crude comments. He talked about hiring prostitutes when he was in the Ukraine and said I’d be ‘better than prostitutes’. He told me he was 27 but actually he’s 37.”
Another young woman, Emily, says she had no idea she was being filmed by Ahmed, who boasted afterwards: “If I had met her on vacation, it would have been a same-day lay.”
Emily hits back: “That infuriates me. For him to so painfully misread that is frustrating.”
Panorama: Secrets of the Seduction Bootcamp, is on BBC1 at 8.30pm on BBC One.