‘Barely Legal’ Founder Gail Thackray Pens Tell-All Adult Memoir

Gail Thackray, who started her career in the adult industry as a “Page 3 Girl” in British tabloids, later becoming an sex business entrepreneur who founded Barely Legal magazine—which went on to become one of the best-selling titles under the Larry Flynt Publications banner—now promotes herself on her personal website as a “spiritual educator,” success coach, medium and Reiki healer. On the site, she can be seen hawking her latest audiobook, 30 Days to Prosperity: A Workbook to Manifest Abundance. But Thackray, formerly known professionally under her married name of Gail Harris, has not completely left her adult industry past behind, as she promises a “behind the scenes” look at many of the top figures in the business, “filled with scandalous revelations,” according to publicity material for the book, published earlier this month and titled, Running with Wolves, a Woman’s Memoir of Sex, Scandal and Seduction. “It’s raw, it’s juicy, it’s hilariously funny,” Thackray says of the memoir. “For the first time, I’m exposing my past.”  That past includes a career in “B” horror movies and extensive work as a nude model in such publications as Hustler, High Society and Genesis, as well as work appearing nude in various softcore films and late-night cable shows, such as The Playboy Channel’s Electric Blue. But Harris along the way worked to build what became her most successful career, as an entrepreneuer of nudity, assembling what in the late 1990s was deemed “The 'World's Largest' Library of Erotic Photos,” as AVN.com reported. Falcon Foto was reportedly valued at $50 million and was once belived to provide about 40 percent of all content published in adult print publications. As might be expected, her travels through the industry put her in close proximity to many of the biggest players in the adult entertainment field, and her memoir promises, “an intimate look into the real lives of (Penthouse publisher Bob) Guccione, Flynt, Hugh Hefner and the wild parties at the Playboy Mansion,” as well as a trove of further scandalous incidents, including “the story of another celebrity sex tape, where the star overdosed on drugs and almost died in the John Belushi room at the Chateau Marmont,” and “the inner workings of the Hollywood Casting Couch.” “In the era of the Me-Too Movement, Thackray emerges as a strong woman who manages to play the game in a man’s world and use it to her advantage,” the book’s PR material states. “This is not about a woman as a victim, dishing out the dirt on powerful men in Hollywood and the Sex Industry, it’s actually a light-hearted, often hilarious look at the real inner workings of a male-dominated-industry and how a young girl was able to pull the strings.” The book is available online via Amazon and other outlets. Photo by GailThackray.com