Stacey Dooley on legalising the sex trade: "We have to make it as safe as possible, regulate it"

"The appetite and the customers will always exist", the BBC3 presenter explains in the latest edition of Radio Times. "We have to make it as safe as possible, regulate it, and [let] the girls take charge."

"The killings come when the girls have to go down an alley alone. That's when they catch STDs, because they're forced to have sex without condoms.

Dooley was speaking ahead of the release of her new series, Sex in the Strangest Places. The BBC3 production sees her travelling to Turkey, Brazil and Russia to explore prostitution around the globe.

But she's still concerned about the state of prostitution in the UK. "I haven't met a prostitute here who says British men treat her as they should. Just think, if we had brothels with security and a panic button – and the girls were able to choose their work, and they paid taxes, and the lads knew there had to be protection.

"There would be fewer murders, fewer STDs" she argues.

It's been almost ten years since Dooley made her first appearance in a BBC documentary – she was just 19 years old when she appeared in Blood, Sweat and T-shirts – and the presenter says she's grown up on BBC3.

So how does she feel about the channel's move online?

"I think it's the future" says Dooley, who believes that people don't sit down to watch TV the way they used to any more. She also reckons the fact that online programming isn't constrained by time slots is a massive bonus.

"We're lucky because we're one of the first to be doing it" says Dooley of the schedule move on February 16th. "In five years time it's where a lot of people will be heading."

Read the full interview with Stacey Dooley in this week's issue of Radio Times, in shops and on the Apple Newsstand from Tuesday February 9th