The Swedish domination of the ” Miss Shoreditch ” competition was as forecast in this column last month ended with the victory of Varona the dark haired Argentine beauty. She is currently though back in Buenos Aires where the £s earned removing her clothes in London must now be quite valuable given the collapse of the local currency. Runner up was English rose Tania who can be seen on her own web site www.tanianet.com .
The boom in table dancing venues in the London area continues at a considerable pace. In January no less than 3 new places opened for business; Expose { Seven Sisters in North London}, LA Confidential { Ealing Broadway West London}, and Bentleys { Southend just to the east of London}. Spearmint are known to be looking for more London venues and as reported last month a replica of the Soprano’s fictional New Jersey Bada Bing bar is planned for London’s West End.Whether the market can support all these ventures remains to be seen, my forecast would be that several of the current ones will not survive long term once the current dot com style bubble ends.
Talking of Spearmint Rhino Samantha McGraw has just won £60,000 compensation in an employment tribunal from the club for being suspended after she became pregnant and so could no longer wear the ” waitress ” outfit of hotpants, a waistcoat, and fishnet stockings. It emerged that unlike the dancers { who pay the club for the privilege } Samantha was actually paid to work there {£26,000 a year} and in addition averaged £5,000 a month in tips. Well known purveyor of sleaze stories to the downmarket UK tabloids Max Clifford is apparently now also the spokesman for SR and he said they will appeal.
While on the subject of tabloid sleaze clean cut TV presenter Jamie Theakston was the subject of a Clifford style article in the Sunday People last week featuring what he got up to with Spearmint lap dancer Amanda White.
It seems that competition from Spearmint is having it’s effect at Stringfellow’s which is probably London’s most high profile table dancing venue having been converted from what had previously been a very famous conventional nightclub. Owner Peter Stringfellow is taking Westminster council to court in order to be allowed to move from topless to full nude dancing. He is complaining that Spearmint Rhino Tottenham Court Road which is only half a mile away but in the neighbouring borough Camden has full nudity and this puts him at a disadvantage. The council and local pressure groups are objecting on the highly dubious grounds that it will turn the place into a brothel and bring in the wrong sort of customer. Given his financial muscle and the impact of EU competition legislation it seems to me highly likely that he will succeed and this will have considerable impact elsewhere in Britain.
Local councils throughout London still routinely object to new adult venues though when it actually comes to court they rarely win. The latest to overcome a council led close down attempt is Charlie Browns of Wood Green { North London}. CB’s is one of the few topless only venues outside Westminster in London and is now also optimistic about getting a full nude license in the near future.
Axe regular Lara has written a stripper’s account of her time in the London strip scene called
” Baby oil and ice ” which is due to be published in the Spring. This concentrates on the much longer established strip pub scene rather than the more recent development of US style table dancing venues.
Bill Tyke.
Author: Saxon
Strip-magazine.com is covering the European Striptease industry with monthly updates on or famous London Gossip, Interviews with industry people, articles and news from the world of striptease. We also offer a Striptalk forum, Industry Directory with Stripclubs and Agents and a Job board for the Striptease industry in Europe.