Jenna’s in the news again. Last week, she announced that she’s quit the industry for good. She’s even removed her false breasts to prove how serious she is about this.

Why does this matter? Why are we interested?

Ms Jameson is a cultural icon. She’s the biggest star the adult industry has ever known. She has done more than any other adult actress towards making a career in pornography a respected (if not respectable) path to follow. The Jenna product is, whatever one’s view of her as an actress, a business success story. The ultimate platinum porn-dolly with pneumatic breasts has used her panache to unbelievable advantage.

The self-styled ‘Queen of Porn’ is a wickedly successful entrepreneur: she is CEO of her own porn empire, Club Jenna, which she co-founded with her (former) husband Jay Grdina. Had things worked out differently, she could easily have descended into a seedy life as a broke, middle-aged stripper. That is not to be: in its fifth year, Club Jenna was making revenues of $30 million.

In 2004, the Jenna empire spat out her autobiography, which spent six weeks in The New York Times bestseller list.

This is a good-looking doorstopper of a book: with her styled as Marilyn Monroe on the cover, surrounded by pretty retro lettering and a titillating title that panders to our inevitable human interest in all things sexual. The book reads well: beginning with her candid admissions of manipulating men with pricks so insistent that their heads and their bank balances couldn’t say no. Jenna includes luscious, dirty reminiscences of her affairs with beautiful women. Photographs compete for space: of her as a young girl, a confused teenage cheerleader, and as a gorgeous young woman.

I guess Jenna’s is a pretty typical story of woe: the absent mother (death by cancer), the distant father, the horrific rapes, the abusive boyfriend, leading to stripping and then anorexia and drug-dependence. Ms Jameson is, however, quick to assert that she is her own responsibility. She is not a damaged product of a bereaved and dysfunctional family: she refuses to be so psychologically easy to unravel.

She unselfconsciously relates the ugly episodes from her past: maintaining a humorous tone even when confronting the most serious incidents. This startling confessional mode is impossible to dislike: I find myself, having finished the book, actually caring about what happens to her. She is worth the 600 pages’ read because she is so proud that despite her emotional lows and her set-backs, she has emerged independent, strong and just a little crazy in all the right ways.

The pace alters from witty analyses of events in her early life to sardonic advice-columns, to comic-strips to interviews with her father, to the script from her first ever porn movie. I astounded myself with my inability to put the book down: I read the first 200-odd pages during the early hours of a Wednesday morning. The frisson of constant mentions of sex coupled with stylish, absorbing writing make for a fine read.

Jenna Jameson’s story ends Cinderella-like in 2003, with a happily-ever-after marriage to Jay Grdina. The fairytale unfortunately doesn’t seem to have lasted: cancer (now in remission), miscarriage and divorce have followed as she edges her way towards forty. Isn’t it a shame that even this remarkable story was not allowed a happy ending?

Here is a taster. It relates Jenna’s first hardcore experience with gonzo film producer Randy West:

I wasn’t ready to experience something so explosive, something in which I had absolutely no shred of self-consciousness. Neither was Randy. When I gave him a blow job, working my mouth and my hand on his shaft with an expertise I never knew I had, he kept stopping me. From the grimace on his face, I could sere that it was taking every ounce of self-control he had to keep from blowing his load and ruining the scene.

It was so much different from sex at home, because here I had the camera as an audience, and every muscle in my being was just naturally flexing, twisting, and arching to make sure our dance looked good for the lens. And knowing that I looked sexy made the sex itself better.

…

As he was nearing orgasm, he suddenly stopped his jackhammer pounding and leaned over my ear. ‘Can I come in you?’ he asked. I was expecting him to follow the tried-and-true formula of pulling out for a pop shot on my face or boobs. And, to tell the truth, it was the part of the scene that I was dreading the most. This was not something I had done before with Suze or in soft-core. Instead of pulling out, however, he came deep inside me. I thought, ‘That’s not going to look very good on film.’ Then he pulled out and said, ‘Squeeze.’ I flexed my PC muscle and the cum just burst out of me, accompanied by a loud squirting sound. It would be an unglamorous but pivotal moment for the adult film business – one of the first internal pop shots.

Afterward, Randy kissed my back. It was a strangely affectionate move to make in a movie like this. Then he turned to the camera and said, ‘She’s kind of like Randy West with a pussy and tits.’

I had found my calling.

We recommend you pick up a copy of Jenna Jameson’s fascinating How To Make Love Like A Porn Star - A Cautionary Tale from Amazon.co.uk