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thechopsy

“Continuous striptease with fully nude girls” - so read the sign in the window of the old Carnival Strip Club, which for many years operated from 12 Old Compton Street. I visited this establishment many times in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the age before the Internet blew away the strip club and sex shop economy. The club had stood on this same site for many years before I first entered it. Today, as with much of old sleazy Soho, it’s gone and almost forgotten.

Entering the front door, one was met with an unexpected site: a wooden balcony much like the upstairs landing of an ordinary house, with stairs leading down to a cavernous and dark basement. This top room was always dark, lit only by the grimy window looking onto the street. It was bare of any furnishing except on solitary table and chair, at which sat a disinterested man who always had his head buried in a book or a magazine. The sound of music drifted up from the basement below. I paid my £5 to the disinterested man, who would place it neatly into a pile of such notes in a metal money box on his table. Waving me on he would return to his reading as if I had never existed.

The stairs were old and wooden and creaked heavily as I descended into the dark of the basement. As my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I would make out the room. A windowless small theatre with perhaps ten rows of seats, eight in a line. The room smelt musky and damp as there seemed to be no way to ever let in any fresh air or natural light. One could imagine that the same air might have been circulating for decades. At the end of the short aisle there was a small green light which marked the entrance to the toilet. Putting aside the stage, this was the only other light visible in the whole room.

Once I was adjusted to the dark, I would walk along the aisle looking for a seat. The aisle was on the left and all the seats stretched out to the right. This meant that if you sat in the rightmost seat, you would be hard up against the opposing wall and have to ask many other patrons to move in order to enter or to leave. The seats were the sort of red folding velvet which were common in all the cinemas of the time.

On the occasions I went in there always around 20 or so patrons present. Most were gathered in the first three rows and with a few others scattered further back with a whole seat row to themselves. They were all, of course, men - young and old, black and white, rich and poor.  No one spoke or cheered or even reacted; they all sat stiff and quiet, staring intently at the stage. Whenever a front row seat was vacated, there was a short but gentlemanly tussle to fill it from people sitting further back.

The stage was a small, perhaps 12 feet long and six feet deep. It was backed by a large, grimy mirrored wall, in which you see reflected the sombre faces of the patrons in the first row. In the middle of the stage was the ubiquitous stripper pole, which ascended into the low ceiling.

The routine was always the same. Ladies would come on stage in rotation one at a time and dance to three popular chart songs of the day. After the third song the red velvet curtains would close and there would be a fourth song, acting like an intermission. During this break patrons would fidget or leave or even brave the toilet – remember there were no mobile phones in those days. The start of the new song would mean a new lady and the curtains would part to the eager excitement of all the watchers.

This way the club would cycle through four acts in an hour and there were perhaps six or seven girls in a shift. Hence if you stayed for a few hours, you would see the same lady dance twice or more. Some patrons stayed for many, many hours – bringing canned drinks and sandwiches. The price of a ticket meant you could stay all day.

None of the ladies were stunning or model like. This was, after all, not the premier such club in Soho, with many more expensive and upmarket establishments within walking distance. Nevertheless, they were all pretty and ranged from late teens to mid-thirties. Some took the strip very seriously and engaged with the patrons and danced with skill, whilst others just shuffled through three songs in a mindless routine. I never saw any that looked distressed or forced or under the influence of any drug.

The ladies always began fully clothed, normally in lingerie or sexy attire. The first song was pretty much a fully clothed dance with some garments being discarded. It normally ended with the bra coming off as the climax, leaving the breasts exposed for the second song. In turn, the same routine occurred again, with the panties coming off at the climax of the second song. The third and last song was then usually danced fully nude.

All in all, the dancing was quite demure. Nothing too crude or vulgar. Some bending here and there, but always discrete. No legs akimbo. No touching of private parts. I guess there were strict rules as to what the ladies could and could not do stage. Many were excellent dancers, and some made incredible dexterous use of the pole.

Despite the rules, some ladies did occasionally cross the line. Once I witnessed a lady bend down legs apart with her back facing the audience, much to the delight of the patrons in the first row. Another time a lady stepped off the stage and lap danced an elderly man allowing him to briefly fondle her breast. These episodes did not happen often - but were just frequent enough to keep the most eager patrons seated all day in anticipation.

All the ladies had their own character, with the regulars waiting in eager anticipation for their favourites. These were normally the younger or more adventurous performers. Some were quite old and, although they tried hard, never got the support of the crowd. As the curtains parted on their first song you could often here a groan from some in the audience and occasionally people rose to leave at this stage. The ladies danced on without seeming to notice.

One lady I saw there was very different from the rest. A young, slim woman in her early twenties, with short black hair; she always seemed so out of place. She dressed quite uniquely and didn’t conform to the standard bikinis or lingerie. She would arrive on stage in heavy black boots rather than delicate kitten heels. Her dances too were original, more a sort of modern interpretation act than traditional dancing.

She would break the rules of strip too, sometimes staying fully dressed into the third song and other times stripping off after less than a minute. There always a kind of danger in the air when she was on stage. Once she leant forward and took a can of lager from an audience member and drank two or three large mouthfuls. Then, turning away from the audience, she rubbed the can opening between her legs, before returning it to the owner who drank from it eagerly.

On another occasion, the curtains opened and she stood fully clothed in her boots and goth style clothing. As the music rose, she did nothing for a while and then suddenly stripped fully nude as if in a store changing room. She then lay on the floor and proceeded to masturbate in full view of the audience. There was a huge commotion off-stage - this was the only time I ever heard anything off-stage. Within thirty seconds the curtains had closed and the commotion rose in to an all-out argument. There was a loud and enthusiastic applause from the normally subdued audience. We didn’t see her again that day – or ever for me.

I often wonder who she was and what became of her. She was such a free spirit; she did not belong in that dark and windowless room. I hope there was no sinister history in her life which lead to her streak of maverick rebelliousness. I hope she found happiness.

Another lady I remember well was very young perhaps only 19. She was much shorter than the other girls with thick blonde hair. She danced with a careful manner and one could see here counting off the steps in her head. She had clearly practiced again and again and tried hard to master the performance, but she always came across as stiff and trying too hard. For her, the stripping was an aside and her dances made no reference to her nudity. She would happily react to any applause from the audience and smile and bow and say thank you at the end of her act.

A year or so later, I saw her again on a train heading north out of Kings Cross. It took me ages to think where I had seen her before. Finally, the penny clicked with old adage that it was hard to recognise her with her clothes on. She was reading a script and intently trying to memorise the lines, covering and repeating over and again. I didn’t approach her, but wish I had. I never heard of her on stage or screen, so I guess her acting and dancing career never took off.

Those far away days in Soho seem like a lifetime away now. It seems London has lost all its character and settled instead into a sort of middle-ground safety. If that dark, dreary, musty, windowless room was still there I would visit it again. If only to get away for a moment from the fake Italian coffee shops and identikit pubs which use books for decorations.

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