For someone so softly spoken, it’s initially difficult to match up Jacqueline Gold with the outspoken, multimillionaire businesswoman behind the Ann Summers shops. That is, until you get her talking on a subject she’s passionate about.

And Gold is passionate about breast cancer awareness this month. She’s been involved with the Breast Cancer Campaign charity for years - first as a trustee until stepping down when her business commitments stepped up. She has been a patron since 2000.

“I wanted to focus on a charity that our customers, who are 75 per cent women in our retail outlets and 100 per women in our party planning business, would relate to. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone who’s been touched by breast cancer. It’s a disease that has claimed so many people. And, even for those who have been cured, it is a traumatic experience to go through,” she says.

Gold’s most recent contact with the disease was through her best friend, Joanna, who died last year after the breast cancer spread to her lungs. Gold’s response? To pull on her trainers and push herself to the limit.

She lined up with thousands of other women in Hyde Park in May to do the 26.2 mile nocturnal Moonwalk through London. “When someone close to you has died of breast cancer, it makes you feel good to specifically do something and put your time and support into it. And it was really hard,” she admits. “I exercise but don’t do jogging or anything like that so, to do it was a big achievement personally.”

Breast Cancer Campaign is one of the many worthy issues Gold puts her name to. Earlier this year, she brought out her book, A Woman’s Courage, which dealt with the darker side of the glossy magazine life she appeared to live. It addressed child abuse at the hands of her stepfather, depression and infertility – a world away from the fun and frolics her Ann Summers and Knickerbox stores are known for.

“Getting an anonymous bullet through the post was the most frightening time in my career, but I just knew the shop was going to be a real success.”

“When someone in the public eye shows their challenges in life, I think that it can be quite inspiring and encouraging for people. We all go through dramas in our lives but I had counselling for a lot of the problems I had, so it prepared me to deal with it publicly,” she says.

There are other causes, some would argue, which are less worthy - such as her product promotions and expansion of the Ann Summers empire. She’s currently in a dispute with London Mayor Ken Livingstone about advertising restrictions on the Underground.

“We have this lovely, tasteful advert of a girl looking like a mermaid promoting our product, the Wave. And, just because it’s Ann Summers, there’s a problem advertising it on the Underground,” she says, heatedly. “When I feel something’s unjust, I have to challenge it because it winds me up so much. I just can’t roll over and accept it.”

Some people wish she would. On opening her first Ann Summers store in Ireland in 2000, the Dublin Corporation fought her all the way, even issuing a writ to prevent the store opening on O’Connell Street. At one point, she received an anonymous bullet through the post.

“Although it was the most frightening time in my career, I just knew that the shop was going to be a real success. And the Dublin store is the second most successful store in our chain after Trafford in Manchester today. So, it was the right decision,” she laughs now.

“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone who’s been touched by breast cancer. It’s a disease that has claimed so many.”

It’s that same passion and self-belief that has made Ann Summers Britain’s most successful high street chain. Gold began what was to become a life-long, multi-million pound career at the age of 19, doing work experience at one of the four Ann Summers shops her father, David Gold, and his brother Ralph acquired in 1972.

“It wasn’t a very nice atmosphere to work in,” she says. “It was all men - the sex industry as we all perceive it to be.” A Tupperware-style fashion party she attended two years later turned things around. Gold realised the vast potential in selling sexy lingerie and sex toys to women in the privacy of their own home. She launched the Ann Summers Party Plan with a ‘no men allowed’ policy – a business which continues to thrive today, with 7,500 party organisers.

Meanwhile, Gold began moving up the chain of command. In 1987, she was made a director of the company and then managing director six years later. Today, Ann Summers has 136 high street stores across the UK, Ireland and Channel Islands, and an annual turnover of £155 million. She boosted this in 2000 by acquiring the Knickerbox brand, of which there are five standalone Knickerbox shops today, and 136 concessions in Ann Summers stores.

She’s been voted the second Most Powerful Woman in Retail by Retail Week, the Most Inspirational Business Woman in the UK in a Barclays Bank survey, one of Britain’s Most Powerful Women by Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, one of Britain’s 100 Most Influential Women by the Daily Mail, and included in Debrett’s ‘People of Today’ in 2005 for her contribution to British society.

At 47, and 27 years with Ann Summer, is she getting itchy feet? “No because I’ve always got new challenges on the go. I’m always looking for them and they’re always there. You get itchy feet when you’re frustrated and stuck in a rut for a while. I’m not that type of person.”

She also insists there’s no link between her troubled childhood and the high street chain she has become queen of. “There was no connection other than, having had such a terrible childhood, I was always looking for ways to get away. I stumbled across Ann Summers purely by chance.

“Coincidentally, I realised that everything to do with sex was for men and that women should be able to spice up their sex lives if they wanted to with sexy underwear, which you couldn’t get back then. What I’ve done is to empower women, well that’s been my aim anyway.” And with that, Jacqueline Gold leans back, smiles and the softly spoken words return.

By Barbara Walshe