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Why we need a decent strip joint

14/04/09 - 0 comments

Quite recently I found myself on a night out in Torquay. Now I love my nights in Torquay, I think nothing tells you that summer is getting close then by dusting down your muscle vest and stay pressed trousers for a night on the English Rivera.

Torquay is a blinding night out as the bars are good, the clubs even better and the women are always fit. What I've always thought it lacked was a strip bar until my esteemed drinking colleagues pointed out to me that there has been one right under my nose in the centre of town. Look up the expression "happy as a pig in shit" in the Oxford dictionary and you will see your heralded writer in a strip bar. Or with a pig. Depends how much I'd drunk that night.

Anyway the choice was made to visit said establishment and I could not have been happier. Now you may remember my exploits in a strip club and how I stumbled across possibly the worst strip club in the world. I now realise that Tiffany's was a positive fucking Spearmint Rhino to what I was about to suffer.

We walked into what seem to be a quite normal and quite quiet bar. There was a DJ, people drinking cocktails etc and all seemed a bit civilised for a titty bar. We were then told by a burly bald chap who had obviously clocked that 9 pissed up lads weren't here for his Pina Colada's that we were to go upstairs. Upstairs led us to a bare second floor that was punctuated by a rather portly woman sitting behind a counter looking like she'd rather be ripping off testicles in a bar fight then be sat waiting to take money and stamp hands.

After some rather pleasant banter with Big Mummy Haystacks we eventually bartered her down from £12 a head to £7. Grand saving of £45. How smug we felt as had our hands stamped with "NO MOBILE PHONES" and walked in ... to what was a cross between a 1940's Russian Theatre and a pot smoker's front room.

First thing I picked up on was the sitting arrangement. Usually you have booths or groups of chairs placed around that allow the paying punter a good view of the girls whilst offering enough room for the girls to work the room. Apparently that is old hat and the new way is to place everyone in rows of neatly arranged seats all facing the same way so everyone feels like they are sitting at the Argos dispatch desk. Just what I'd want, a stranger sat behind me with a hard on.

I next noticed that where the pole had been put into the floor, the carpet hadn't been repaired. So it was surrounded by off cuts of carpet tiles. Not exactly the classiest of places but when in Rome as they say.

Undeterred I headed to the bar and discovered that it also doubled up as DJ booth/kitchen. As I was buying my drink all it made me think about was what my kitchen would look like with a record player in it as a spotty teenager plucked fresh from the Waltzers leered into a mic.

Drink in hand, with Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb" blaring I turn to face the action as I am now at the back of the terrace of chairs. It is as this point I realise there is in fact no stage. So from my view point, 10 blokes deep at the back, I can only see the top half of the dancers body. I can only imagine it was like watching the now banned episode of Ironside where he strips. It got worse as she started her routine on the floor. At this point I cannot see anything apart from the occasional high heel appearing like the fin from Jaws.

Now she can't have been that great a dancer as the 3 lads in the front row decided to leave. Only problem was the stripper was penning them in by gyrating on the floor in front of them. So they did what any self respecting English man would do, they stepped over the stripper whilst apologising profusely.

That could well have been the final straw but the final straw was when I turned to my right and realised the only thing that did not have a curtain was the seemingly open plan VIP area which featured several extremely awkward looking blokes, giving each other shifty looks whilst their £20 turns danced for them.

At this point I actually mourned for Tiffany's.

So if you fancy 1940s, Russian theatre, football terraced themed strip clubs where carpet is at a premium then Sirenz (fucking name says it all) is the place for you.

Chrissy B

(Surely this sad tale is enough to warrant the extension of EX4, at the very least Chrissy B will have somewhere decent to spend his hard earned foldies - Ed)

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