One of the most effective ways of meeting pimps and sex workers is to actually go where they work, which also means working the same hours as them. So we work between 10pm and 2am, and interview them when they come to health workers for advice, tea, coffee and condoms. Sometimes we go to massage parlours with health workers, or to prisons and other semi-public locations depending on where the interviewee prefers. No, we don't think of it like that. A project takes so long to set up and to work out all the logistics that by the time you get to the location, it all seems quite normal.
Sex workers are mostly very genuine women with a great sense of humour.
We'll sit around and chat about things over coffee just as you and I would. Generally speaking, it's not easy. You can end up making several attempts to interview someone, and then they don't turn up - you do have to accept that there'll be hundreds of failed occasions and lots of wasted journeys. We contacted drug users who'd been referred to us by the probation service but that was difficult, mainly because contact had been lost or they had re-offended. So we would also sit in on drug surgeries held at probation offices.