Tuppy Owens

Who is Tuppy Owens?

Tuppy Owens is a British sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, and writer. Tuppy Owens was born in Cambridge. She gained a degree in zoology from Exeter University, and then worked in ecology in Africa and Trinidad during three years as a scientific administrator at the Natural Environment Research Council. She settled in London, where at first she continued that work. Then, in the late 1960s, she established a sex education book publishing company, for which she wrote and published The Sex Maniac’s Diary successfully between 1972 and 1995, and which she operated as a thriving and attention-grabbing business from her Mayfair flat — for example, the 1975 Sex Maniac's Diary was launched in August 1974 with a reception at the Bristol Hotel in London which was reported on the following day in the Financial Times.

From 1974, Owens also began lecturing on the subject of sex.

In 1979, Tuppy Owens started Outsiders, for people with disabilities seeking new friends and partners.

From 1984, the diary was published as The Safer Sex Maniac's Diary and provided the first visual instructions to the public on how to put a condom on securely; it also reviewed condoms and offered safer sex advice, all at the beginning of the outbreak of HIV.