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I should start by saying that I am a male non dancer and thus
all the information I have gathered over the years is second hand and may
be slightly coloured by my status as a humble customer. I have tried with
this to be as neutral as possible but this based on my view of the stripping
world in London and so may well be biased and/or inaccurate in places. Running
through the main topics that seem to crop up with girls thinking of starting
to work in area, these are what I see as the main issues:
Years ago a girl who took all her clothes off
for male sexual gratification was called a stripper. These days it seems
a more socially acceptable occupation if you refer to it as table, pole,
or lap dancing but a girl coming into the industry should not fool herself,
it's all the same thing except that these enlightened days the girl pays
to work!
A lot of girls ask am I too young at 18 or too
old at 30. The answer is no in both cases, there is no real age limit in
the UK and if you are employed in this field you will rarely have to give
your correct age { or indeed even your real name !}anyway. I know one girl
who started when still just 15 {strictly illegal} and worked for 20 years
before retiring to run an agency. I know several girls past 40 who still
work successfully. The only comments I would make are that if you are very
young you need to be both mature for your age and emotionally resilient.
If you want to keep working into your late 30s and beyond you need to look
after yourself physically.
A number of {especially} foreign girls have asked
me if they need an agent to look after them in London. The short answer
is no, not an exclusive one anyway. Most of the larger places book their
own girls direct, there are some good agents in London but they just find
specific bookings.
Any person with an EU passport needs no work permit
in the UK. If you are from outside the EU then you do officially need one
normally but very few clubs will actually ask for one.
Almost every strip place in London is full nude
and quite explicit at that, if you are very shy about your clitoris then
maybe it's not the job for you. All regular places {as opposed to private
parties} are officially non touching though sometimes these rules are not
enforced very strictly. You will though not be forced into this if you are
not happy, some girls like a bit of contact as it tends to make them more
popular { and hence better paid} with the customers. At private parties
"full contact "dances are standard and at certain ones everything
up to full sex on stage goes on , though even here participation is voluntary.
While I do hear stories about club owners, DJs,
and even barmen demanding sexual favours from girls {most often from girls
new to England without work permits} this is not the norm for London places
and there are enough pubs/clubs in London for you to just walk out and get
another job elsewhere. At no places I know in London will you be expected
to sleep with customers for money {most make great play of forbidding this}
but of course a few girls will do this on a freelance basis!
Another common question is "Where can I
learn to lap dance? ". Currently in London there are 2 courses Jo King's
London School of Striptease and the regular slightly more upmarket one run
by FYEO Mayfair, both seem competently run as far as I can tell. There are
links to both on this web site. Jo King worked
as a pub stripper for nearly 20 years and is a good source of advice for
that side of the business. FYEO is a professionally run club. In the old
days girls just learnt by doing and watching others and you can still do
that if you want. Even if you are a useless dancer most places will still
employ you provided you look OK.
As you are taking your clothes off for men's pleasure
you need to look good naked and also to move in a seductive way. In addition
as your earnings come directly from the audience you need to have good inter-personal
skills. In most places you will get a lot of regulars and as time goes on
your personality will become more important in retaining their long term
interest than pure looks. The girls that do really well at stripping have
a combination of all 3 attributes.
A very mixed bunch is the short answer. In London
over half of the other girls will probably be from overseas particularly
Brazil and Eastern Europe. You get students, long stay tourists, frustrated
artists of all sorts, and even office professionals earning extra money
on the side. You tend not to get too many girls committed to the job long
term although in the event many will work for many years on and off. Many
girls tell me that at certain clubs the rapport between the girls makes
the place a pleasure to work at.
Forget the dirty old man image and the new lad
stuff, all types and ages of men use strip pubs and clubs. They may be smarter
dressed at the clubs but they won't be any nicer ! A lot of girls say "
I would never go out with a man who uses a strip club " when they start
out in the business but in the event a number do and have long term relationships
{both sexual and non sexual}with them. You do get tight fisted, abusive,
nasty men in these places as in all walks of life but most are not and you
will find the whole experience more enjoyable {and lucrative} if you let
friendships develop.
These almost always take place in the club/pub
in normal working hours, if somebody suggests an audition in his bedroom,
don't go ! Places vary greatly as to the standards they want, just because
you are rejected at one place does not mean you should give up {unless you
get rejected by the Rainbow Sports Bar who would give a job to someone with
the looks of Olive from On the Busses , the personality of Janet Street
Porter, and the dancing ability of a 3 legged hippo !}.
Aside from the usual stuff about does the place
feel right and has the owner/DJ/barman propositioned me I would look out
for the following. Firstly do they try to match the number of girls to the
potential customers. Secondly are the house fees paid up front or at the
end of the night. This can be significant as on quiet nights many places
reduce or even waive the fees, they are less likely to do this if you have
paid up front. Thirdly ask the regular girls how long they have worked there
, if none have been there more than a couple of months that will tell you
something.
In strip pubs a lot of girls use sexual fantasy
{schoolgirl, sexy secretary etc} outfits or skimpy underwear, in the clubs
it tends to be more evening dresses and thongs. There are lots of places
on the net to purchase clothes including an on line shop at www.strip-magazine.com.
In the bad old days when girls were called strippers
and only dirty old men used the clubs/pubs the venue used to pay the girls.
Now in this post modern world it's called lap dancing and the places are
full of celebs and new lads the girls pay the venue for the privilege of
working. Payments come in the form of a flat house fee, commission on "tipping
dollars", and tips from the girls to the "house mother",
bouncers, or barmen for their " help " { like turning a blind
eye to a bit of touching}. The range of fees charged varies enormously but
as a rule of thumb the more central and the posher the club the more they
will charge.
Earnings for the girl come from private dances { sometimes
paid in " dancing dollar" tokens the house takes a cut from} with
sometimes extra for using certain rooms, champagne bought, tips from pleased
customers etc. In strip pubs {some which now look like clubs} the girls
also go around with a jug for tips before doing their stage shows, in most
clubs they have to do these for free.
Earnings for the girls can vary enormously, some
nights the girls will not make their house fees some nights they will make
hundreds if not thousands. In newspaper articles {usually with a headline
like "The judge and the lap dancer " !} and often in quotes from
the owners you will read that dancers regularly make £2, £3
or even £5,000 a night at these clubs. Girls mainly make their money
from table dances usually at £20 a throw, ignoring commissions/fees
etc to make £2,000 in 1 night would involve 100 table dances ie around
15 an hour for a typical 7 hour shift, I just don't think that happens.
What does happen on the odd night in the odd venue that is a girl {or girls}
sometimes strikes lucky with a merchant banker spending his Christmas bonus
or a soccer player his signing on fee or some visiting diplomat spending
his countries UN food aid programme. They spend most of the night in the
club with her and give her a big wad for her trouble. I am sure this does
happen but unless you are the favourite of a billionaire regular {like Anna
Nichole-Smith in her stripping days} it won't happen very often.
Club owners often say in one breath " My girls can earn
£x000's a night " and then in another " Very few girls stay
a year, most only a few weeks ". You have to ask yourself does this
sound plausible.
My opinion {and as a non dancer I may well be wrong here}
is that the consistent and average earnings of all of the girls who work
for Browns/Griffen will be as high as anywhere else in London {not counting
girls who sleep with customers}. I am sure the top earners at say Stringfellow's
make more but I bet the average net of fees is not significantly higher.
At Browns off 5 or 6 4 hour shifts a week I think the average girl will
regularly top £1,500 a week and many will top £2,000. In the
evenings the place is very busy {100 to 300 men}, they insist on a £1
minimum per jug, and there are only normally 8 girls per shift on so table
dances are relatively plentiful. I know 1 particularly beautiful girl who
has worked there now for 13 years and several who have worked there for
over 5 years, it tends to suggest that they feel they could not do better
elsewhere.
A lot of girls won't consider the old style strip
pubs mainly because being a lap dancer at Secrets or Spearmint Rhino with
dollars in your garter belt sounds better than being an east end pub stripper
trying to get people to put in a jug. Actually though I think the choice
between the 2 is much closer than you would think and I suspect some of
the better strip pubs stack up very well earnings {and other} wise with
any of the clubs.
Taking the clubs first, the main ones in London are well decorated
{John Gray of Spearmint told me the main reason for this was to please the
girls rather than the customers}, have good security, nice changing rooms,
they are clean, have a good sound system and a professional DJ, are open
until very late, and they tend to be flexible about girl's shifts. The drawbacks
are the girls are charged £50 to £100 a shift house fee, they
all take a commission on the dances sold, stage dancers are free, they charge
on the door and have very expensive drinks and so they are rarely packed,
the shifts are very long, and as the girls represent the clubs main source
of income they tend to have as many girls on at once as possible.
Strip pubs on the other hand charge the girls less, let them
do a jug for stage dances, have cheap drinks and no door charges so normally
have lots of customers, make the bulk of their money on booze so normally
have less girls on at once, and don't stay open until 3am so shifts are
shorter. On the other hand some {though not all} pubs are grotty with poor
changing facilities and crap sound systems, some have poor security, and
because they have less girls per shift they tend to be much more rigid about
who works and when. Full lists of addresses etc can be found in www.trashcity.org
{ undressed to kill section}.
The top of the range London clubs are Stringfellow's
and Spearmint Tottenham Court Rd. These are big, very plush places and consistently
the busiest and they are the places most likely to offer a girl the "£2,000
myth " night. On the other hand they charge the girls the most here
{around £100 a night}, have the most girls per shift on, and have
the longest list rules and demands on the girls.
A lot of girls find that they can do better at some of the
smaller clubs like Secrets, FYEO, Badabing, Sophisticats, and the other
2 London Spearmints. These are also quite plush places, house fees are normally
in the £50 to £60 range, they have less girls on, and are less
consistently busy.
Some of the bigger pubs do their own bookings
but most use agencies. The agencies are all in Trash City and all have a
portfolio of pubs {and some clubs} some of which are good and some very
grotty. House fees are normally low or non existent in these pubs.
At the top end of the pub market are Browns and Metropolis.
Browns is the bigger and busier of the 2, Metropolis is plusher and more
club like. Browns house fees vary from £15 to £40 a shift depending
on how busy it is, it takes no commission on dances, there is no admission
charge, and the bar is at standard London pub prices. It also only has 6
to 10 girls per shift, they make lucrative jug collections before performing
on a high main stage which most girls seem to enjoy. It's clean, has good
security, and a top flight sound system. Browns has a sister pub the Griffen
which has a similar format but is smaller, and a lot of Browns girls also
work at another good pub in Shoreditch called the White Horse.
Metropolis is basically smaller but spread on 3 floors, it's
really more of a competitor to Secrets etc but they still do jug collections.
It was the first place in London to do table dancing and is still one of
the most consistently busy places. It's prices, house fees etc are similar
to Secrets or FYEO.
I have been going to these places for nearly 20
years and these are the most common pitfalls I have observed, don't;
1} Do drugs. The girls that have ended up in the biggest mess
have all had big drug problems.
2} Have a Dick-head boyfriend. As the girls keep odd hours
they tend to like to socialise in the early hours of the morning. Men who
work can't do this so many end up with boyfriends who don't work but live
off them.
3}Brag about money. Girls discuss money all the time but my
recommendation would be to keep it to yourself what you earn as it only
sets up petty rivalries.
4} Chase rainbows. The scene is awash with stories of how
people are earning fortunes at some club or other. My advice would be to
find a place you like and can earn decent money at and stick to it building
up regulars.
5} Shag the other staff. Love affairs in the workplace are
normally a bad idea with any job.
6}Be short term. An ambition to do something better is fine
but many girls are continually saying they are leaving the business but
end up back. Be realistic and treat this as a job you might stay in for
10 or 15 years.
7} Treat the customers with contempt. Some girls start with
the attitude that all customers must be perverts and so I will do as little
as possible and rip them off at every turn. This inevitably catches up with
you.
8} Slag off other girls. As in any workplace it's best if
you get on with your fellow workers.
9} Buy a sports car. If you are earning well it's tempting
to treat yourself but I'd aim to put enough money away to make your life
comfortable when you give up. Mind you I'm old and boring these days !
10} Give free table dances. Except to me of course !
Tyke 6/4/2003
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