By FIONA BARTON

Last updated at 13:02 10 January 2008

Like most teenage girls, Cheryl Tunney is a fan of boy bands, likes chatting to friends on the internet and going out.

However, the unemployed 18-year-old admits to another, horrifying, "hobby".

Since losing her virginity at 16, this young girl claims to have had sex with at least 50 men she picked up on the internet.

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She confesses to not using condoms or other contraceptives during many of her sexual encounters with strangers and claims most were "over in a minute".

Miss Tunney, from Dagenham, Essex, can give the first names of 36 of her partners but the rest have been forgotten - or never known.

She explains with a shrug: "When you sleep with so many, you kind of lose count."

The appalling picture of soulless - and reckless - promiscuity among Britain's youth was revealed in a BBC3 documentary series last night.

In Sex ..... With Mum and Dad, Miss Tunney confesses her sexual tally to her shocked mother, Debbie, but insisted that many girls of her age "slept around", adding: "Girls around here do it all the time."

The youngster told her 45-year-old mother, who is separated from Cheryl's father, how she picked up men, including a drug dealer, by trawling online dating and networking sites in internet cafes.

Miss Tunney's own listing on Britain's most popular social network website, Bebo, which has 11 million users, most of them teenagers, shows her posing suggestively in a bikini.

Her description of herself tells its own story: "hiya every! my names cheryl im 17 frm essex. im a big mcfly fan as u guessed bt i also like rnb and hip hop. i easy going so if ya wana chat message me and i will reply. luv ya all x x x"

She has 249 "friends" listed - most of them men - including "Jordan" who messaged her to say "yer bbz [babes] your bangin, idd shag ya

add me if ya intrested" and Squeak who tells her "hey your hot".

In the documentary, which brings children and parents together for a frank discussion about sex in a bid to mend relationships between the generations, the teenager admitted that some internet contacts asked her to have sex without preamble.

One simply asked: "Do you want to meet for a sh*g?" but she claimed she often made dates and then stood the men up.

Miss Tunney said: "I stated using dating sites with my friends at about the age of 14. We would bunk off school and go to the internet cafe and just flirt with boys online.

"The first time I went to meet one of them we were both 14, but my mum went along with me. I didn't lose my virginity until I was 16 but I have now had about 50 partners."

Miss Tunney added: "That does seem quite a lot in two years."

In a televised confrontation with her mother, the teenager drew a series of stick men to represent her dozens of partners and appeared shocked when Debbie Tunney revealed she had only had three sexual partners in her life.

The 18-year-old said: "We had to write our numbers on a board for the show and the initial for each partner's name. I couldn't believe my mum had only had sex with three men.

"It made my number seem really high and it was worse because I could only remember about 40 of their names. I have decided not to sleep around any more."

Astonishingly, given her admission that she did not always use condoms, the young woman tested negative for sexually transmitted diseases.

She said: "That is so weird. How did that happen?"

During sessions with Dutch sexologist Maria Schopman, Miss Tunney claimed she was promiscuous because she was lonely after her parents split up three years ago and was unable to talk about her feelings.

Mother and daughter say they have no regrets about revealing such intimate details on the show but Miss Tunney admitted she was slightly 'nervous' about the reaction.

She said: "I am nervous - I don't want people to think badly of me - but the show had quite a positive effect on me and my relationship with my mum.

"She still doesn't want me sleeping with lots of men and I don't want to, so we get on a lot better.

"I haven't been near an internet dating site since filming the programme. I now want to concentrate on my life an my future and try to make a career in hairdressing."