Hugh Hefner’s ex-butler reveals all about life inside the Playboy mansion

The unidentified man says he had 'seen a lot, heard a lot and done a lot'

Sarah Jones
Thursday 28 September 2017 11:22 EDT
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(AFP/Getty Images)

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A former butler of Hugh Hefner has revealed all about life inside the Playboy Mansion.

Sleeping with more than 1,000 women, dating beauties less than a third his age and playing host to decadent parties, it’s no surprise that some men envied Hefner’s salacious lifestyle.

But as excerpts from a previously unpublished interview emerge, an ex-butler who was fired for “an intrusion on his personal life” claims to expose what really went on behind the mansion’s doors.

After working for Hefner – who died yesterday age 91 – for almost four years, the unidentified staff member wanted to have the final word on his former employer.

So, in January 1985 he turned to Bob Guccione – the legendary magazine publisher who built a media empire starting with Playboy’s rival, Penthouse.

Taken from counter-culture magazine VICE, the interview details everything from illicit drug use to group sex, with the butler insisting that he had “seen a lot, heard a lot and done a lot”

In the interview, he begins by discussing the overwhelming presence of illegal substances at the Playboy mansion. And, while he claims that people openly smoked marijuana, their consumption of large amounts of cocaine was typically kept behind closed doors.

The frustrated ex-aide claims to reveal all about life inside the Playboy mansion
The frustrated ex-aide claims to reveal all about life inside the Playboy mansion (Vice)

“You’ll see a lot of people smoking joints but mainly people go into the bath house or the game room. You know exactly what they’re doing,” he said.

But that’s not all. The former aide also said that the girls, or ‘bunnies’ as they became known, would regularly sleep with men in exchange for drugs and would be booted from the property if they declined to have sex with Hefner’s friends.

“If you got a toot for [the girls] you get laid immediately. So most of the disgusting old men up there bring coke with them to try to get laid,” he added.

The ex-butler also lifts the lid on a number of drug-related arrests that allegedly occurred at the mansion in the mid-1970s as well as going on to explicitly detail the group sex activities of Hefner and his guests.

The interview details everything from illicit drug use to group sex (Vice)
The interview details everything from illicit drug use to group sex (Vice)

As an outsider, one would imagine that invitation to the pipe-smoking Casanova’s pad would be hard to come by, but it seems that celebrity visitors to the mansion were few and far between.

This, the butler says, was because Playboy had begun to develop somewhat of a bad reputation. Alas, instead of mainstream celebs and politicians, Hefner’s parties attracted large numbers of “has-beens with nothing to lose.”

“They go and freeload up there. Everybody up there is a freeloader,” he said.

“I’m pretty much convinced that nobody really likes him that much, they just go up there to use the place and then they kiss his a** when he’s around.

“If you go there at the right time, you reap all the benefits from the place and you never have to talk to him.

“He’s just not that like-able of a person.”

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