He might have a bath before departure and sometimes I walked into the bathroom to surprise him there lying in six inches of soapy water. Meanwhile downstairs, my mother perched lightly in the worn velvet armchair to skim through the newspaper. Then there were elaborate discussions between them, prior to our leaving, to negotiate the exact time of our return, and I understood this was because the timing and preparation of a Sunday lunch was a complex affair. My father took me out of the house the better to allow my mother to concentrate single-mindedly upon this precise task and she was grateful for that opportunity, I believed. It was only much later that I grew to realise how much she detested cooking and housework.

A mile upstream there was a house on the other riverbank, the last but one in a terrace and the front door gave directly onto the street. This was our regular destination. When we crossed the river at this point by car, we took the large bridge entwined with gryphons cast in iron. On the times we walked, we crossed downstream at the suspension footbridge and my father’s strength was always great enough to make the entire structure swing.

Even after all this time, I can remember the name of the woman who lived in the narrow house by the river because my father would tell my mother quite openly that he was going to visit her, and her daughters. For she had many daughters, and all preoccupied with grooming themselves it seemed. I never managed to count them because every week the number of her daughters changed, or so it appeared. Each had some activity, whether it was washing her hair or manicuring her nails, that we would discover her engaged with upon our arrival. These women shared an attitude of languor, as if they were always weary, but perhaps that was just how they were on Sunday, the day of rest. It was an exclusively female environment and I never recalled any other male present when I went to visit with my father on those Sunday mornings.

To this day, the house remains, one of only three remnants of an entire terrace. Once on a visit, years later, I stood outside the house in the snow, and contemplated knocking on the door and asking if the woman still lived there. But I did not. Why should I? What would I ask? What could I say? The house looked blank, like a face. Even this is now a memory to me, that I recalled once again after another ten years had gone by and I glanced from a taxi window to notice the house, almost dispassionately, in passing.

There was a table with a bench seat in an alcove which extended around three sides, like on a ship, so that sometimes as I sat drinking my orange squash while the women smoked their cigarettes, I found myself surrounded and unable to get down even if I chose. At an almost horizontal angle, the morning sunlight illuminated this scene from a window in the rear of the alcove and gave the smoke visible curling forms in the air. After a little time, sitting there, I became aware that my father was absent, that he had gone upstairs with one of the women. I knew this because I heard their eager footsteps ascending.

On one particular day, I sat at the end of the bench with my back to the wall. The staircase was directly on the other side of this thin wall and the women at the table were involved in an especially absorbing conversation that morning, and I could hear my father’s laughter at the top of the stairs. Curiosity took me. I slipped off the bench, placed my feet on the floor and began to climb the dark little staircase.

I could see the lighted room at the top. The door was wide open and standing before the end of the bed was my father and one of the daughters. They were having a happy time, both laughing and leaning back with their hands on each other’s thighs. My father was lifting the woman’s skirt and she liked it. Yet my presence brought activities to a close in the bedroom that morning. It was a disappointment, something vanished from the room as I walked into it but I did not know what it was. That was the last time my father took me to that house, perhaps the last time he visited. Though I could not say what happened on those Sunday mornings when I chose to stay with my mother.

We ate wonderful Sunday lunches, so that whatever anxiety I had absorbed from my father, as we returned without speaking on that particular Sunday morning, was dispelled by anticipation as we entered the steamy kitchen with its windows clouded by condensation and its smells of cabbage and potatoes boiling.

My mother was absent from the scene, so I ran upstairs in a surge of delight – calling to find her – and there she was, standing at the head of the bed changing the sheets. I entered the bedroom smiling with my arms outstretched and, laughing, tried to lift the hem of her pleated skirt just as I saw my father do in that other house on the other side of the river. I do not recall if my father had followed or if he saw this scene, only that my mother smiled in a puzzled fashion, ran her hands down her legs to her knees, took my hand and led me downstairs to the kitchen where she checked the progress of the different elements of the lunch. For in spite of herself, she was a very good cook and the ritual of those beautiful meals proved the high point of our existence at that time.

The events of that Sunday morning long ago when my father took me to the narrow house with the dark staircase by the river only came back to me as a complete memory in adulthood, but in that instant I understood their meaning. I took a strange pleasure in this knowledge that had been newly granted. I understood what kind of house it was and who the “daughters” were. I was grateful that my father had taken me there, and from then on I could only continue to wonder at what else this clue might reveal of my parents’ lives, and of my own nature.

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Many in Spitalfields enjoy spending time at The White Horse on the corner of Redchurch St and Shoreditch High St. Even on a midweek afternoon, when the pavements are empty, you can rely upon stepping inside the barroom and finding an enthusiastic crowd. It is an expectedly democratic place in which City workers and constructions workers rub shoulders, all mesmerised by the astounding balletics of the pole dancers at this celebrated East End strip pub where – unusually  for such an establishment – women are welcome too.

No-one is more at home in The White House than Sue Bristow who has lived above the premises since 1978 and grew up there. With a life that would be envy of her customers, Sue is the presiding goddess in a little black dress, constantly surrounded by attendant Aphrodites in skimpy exotic outfits. Even as I chatted with Sue at the bar, glamorous creatures were flitting around catching her eye with a wink and nod, as they brandished their pint pots which the customers take such delight in filling with pound coins – merely for the opportunity of being in the same room with these nubile lovelies who cavort for the pleasure of their silent admirers.

With its blank facade and windows shielded from the street, this public house might appear mysterious to anyone who has never been through the door but, as Sue spoke, I realised there was nothing to hide beyond that certain discretion which is the strippers’ prerogative.

My dad, John Bristow, and his family are from Chicksand St. He and my uncles all worked in the Spitalfields Market together, and my nan, Glenys Bristow, ran a cafe in Commercial St opposite the market until they was bombed out in the war. She lives in Bethnal Green now and when we take her around Spitalfields she points out where everything used to be.

In 1978, we moved here to The White Horse. My mum and dad got the place and I was brought up above the pub. My dad was a lorry driver and my mum was a secretary, and they had to learn how to run a pub as they went along. When we first started, we had dancers here only on Thursday and Friday evenings, and Sunday lunchtimes. You had Robinsons that sold electric pumps across the road then, the betting shop on the corner, and there were a lot of banks, Lloyds, Barclays and Nat West, and the Post Office. But gradually all the people went away and even the banks shut. This was in the first recession and, although I was really young, I remember they were rough times – but we somehow managed to stay open throughout.

I started working here before I should of. In my school holidays I used to do the cleaning and the tills. Now I have a daughter of my own who’s fourteen, she always asking if she can work behind the bar and at Christmas she helps the girls to cash up all their pound coins from their pint pots. When I was eighteen, I was put in my own pub – The Crown, overlooking Victoria Park. I was one of the youngest licensees in the country. It was very hard work, your whole life is the pub. I did two and a half years at The Crown.

I don’t think I’ve ever left home completely. This pub is like my front room. It’s my home, isn’t it? I’ve been brought up in it, I’ve lived and breathed it. My dad retired eight years ago to Murcia near Alicante in Spain but Pauline, my mum, she didn’t want to go to Spain or leave the pub. She is very much the backbone here, and now she and I run it together. She takes care of the pub side, makes sure it’s open in the morning, does the tills, orders the beer, checks in the cellar and does the bookwork. She’s very meticulous, she doesn’t miss a thing. I do the girls, they check in with with me every morning when they begin their shifts. I do the booking sheets – we plan six weeks in advance. We find girls through word of mouth and we have a lot coming in to audition, but I only need the best of performers. I’ve been watching the dancers since I was fourteen, so I know who’s a good dancer.

The girls get to keep all their pounds in the pot here, we don’t take commission like some pubs do. I like to take care of the girls – to give them a safe and clean environment, and nice changing rooms. I get on with the girls very well and quite a few of them are my friends, and the girls all get on well together too. There are only five on each shift and they each do five performances. When we opened Blush – the table dancing venue upstairs – we had a meeting and let all the girls speak, in order to work out the fairest way to run it. I always oversee the girls personally, and I want it to be relaxed and not a competitive atmosphere.

People who have never been inside a strip pub sometimes presume that the men are in control but the opposite is true – the woman on stage has the most power, she has all the men under her control. Many of the girls say they enjoy that it’s run by women here. We only employ men to do the security. On Saturday night, we had a group of youngsters in and I decided they were not going to stay. I went over to them and said, “Right lads, this is my pub and I’ve told the staff that you’re not going to be served. You’ve got to leave. When you’re more mature, you’re more than welcome to come back.” And a few of them apologised. Not everyone knows how to talk to people, but if you make a little joke and they laugh. then you can get them on your side. It’s something you learn.

The doormen say, “If it kicks off, it’s not the customers you have to look out for, it’s Sue!”

This last comment was accompanied by a self-deprecatory laugh and roll of the eyes from Sue, before our conversation was concluded by the return of her daughter from school, exchanging greetings with the girls, all smiles and eager to tell her mother of her day. Glowing with maternal pride, Sue introduced me, demonstrating the enviable ease which permits her to inhabit the role of strip pub manager and mother simultaneously.

Sue Bristow - “I’ve been watching the dancers since I was fourteen, so I know who’s a good dancer.”

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

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Hessel St is named in remembrance of Phoebe Hessel (born 1713), known as the “Amazon of Stepney” who dressed as a man to enlist in the army to be with her lover – an honourable example which demonstrates that trannies are an integral part of the culture and history of the East End. And I am proud to report that this venerable tradition still flourishes today, reaching its exuberant zenith each year at “London’s Next Top Tranny Contest” held at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Social Club.

It was my privilege to sit at the head of the catwalk, surrounded by a raucous and appreciative crown, to witness these glamorous extravagant flowers at close quarters as they competed furiously in last week’s nail-biting contest finale. Yet before proceedings commenced, Russella – our long-legged pole dancing hostess in pink glitter – confessed her motives with a refreshing lack of false modesty, redefining the terms of the contest unambiguously.

“Why would I want to give the title of London’s Top Tranny to someone less talented and less good looking than myself? That’s why I am the host tonight, because the winner will be London’s Next Top Tranny – after me. They will be London’s Next Top Tranny when I die. In other words, over my dead body…” she declared, fluttering her spidery eyelashes as she twisted her sparkly lips into an insouciant smile and tossed her blonde locks with self conscious grace.

Once the unassailable Russella had asserted her alpha-tranny status, it was time to bring on the contestants, Miss Cairo, Fancy Chance, Stephanie, Polly Sexual, Jean Benett and Strawberry Pickles, and what a gorgeous display of unapologetically ambiguous gender they presented – to delight the most jaded eye and uplift the weariest spirit. Six brave souls who had cast aside conventional notions of dignity in the quest for greatness. Lacking breasts, possessing male body hair (and in one case having a beard), none of these contestants aspired literally to be taken for women, instead they had adopted female trappings to aid them in exaggerated variations upon the performance of femininity. And, as if to emphasise the point, Russella even staged an uproarious cookery demonstration making pancakes on stage.

Running through the evening was a compelling dramatic tension between the trannies’ performances that invite our suspension of disbelief and their clunky pantomime outfits which simultaneously remind us of their wearers’ inauthentic gender. These fearless trannies incarnate a persuasive poetry. It is a question of how far are you prepared to go to humiliate yourself for the sake of becoming fabulous.

And these trannies held nothing back, embracing challenges to retain dignity while walking in wildly mis-matched ill-fitting shoes, displaying extreme emotions while blasted by a wind machine, drinking copious amounts of of cider, and eating live worms, raw meat and dog food. Stephanie, a shy senior tranny in a bridal gown, won affection early on for tottering in ill-matched heels displaying swollen ankles and varicose veins, and then, as if to dispel the audience’s pity, won a round of applause for eating a whole can of dog food. Other memorable highlights included Miss Cairo’s supermodel walk sustained while wearing a wooden clog and a five inch heel, Polly Sexual’s glorious dress woven from yellow and black hazard tape, Strawberry Pickles’ soulful appeal for drag queen asylum to prevent her being sent back to Sarah Palin’s America, Jean Benett’s curiously Gwyneth Paltrow-like enactment of constipation, and Fancy Chance’s performance as the artist formerly known as Prince, which made such ingenious use of an aerosol of cream and drew deafening shrieks of joy from the crowd.

It all came down to two contenders. Strawberry Pickles, distinguished by her relentless cheerfulness and Fancy Chance who accomplished that rare stage feat of being mean and charming at the same time. She was the dark horse of the contest, wearing trousers and exuding masculinity, I wrongly assumed Fancy was a man performing as a manly woman. Only part-way through the contest did I realise that Fancy Chance was the only entrant going in the opposite direction to the others, from woman to man. She had taken me in from the start. So it was only just that she won, though friends were surprised next day when I said I had been to a tranny contest and a woman won – though I have no doubt Phoebe Hessel would have approved of the result.

There is a strange nobility in the trannies’ condition, emerging from the shadowlands of gender into the limelight, so proud and flamboyant, craving attention like children, and seeking affection and respect for their fabulousness. We love them for their excess, their devotion to sentimental songs and inability to lipsynch, their make-up that smears, their wigs that come off and their trashy costumes that come apart. We cherish their magnificent failures. We love them for their audacity. They are delicate creatures of the nighttime and we do not want to know where they go in the daytime, because there is an elusive magic to these vibrant personalities unlocked by cross-dressing.

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

Read more about the fabulous life of Russella, London’s Top Tranny and find out about the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Social Club at www.workersplaytime.net

On Sunday night, I attended the most glamorous party of my life. It was a Bunny Girls & Playboy Models’ reunion hosted by ex-Bunny Barbara Haigh, esteemed landlady of The Grapes in Limehouse. Never have I encountered more voluptuous charismatic ladies per square metre than were crammed joyfully together in the tiny bar-rooms of this historic riverside pub that night.

With Sarah Ainslie, Spitalfields Life contributing photographer, as my chaperone, I was thrilled to join this exuberant sisterhood of more than a hundred garrulous alpha females for a knees-up. Squeezing my way through the curvy bodies – fine specimens of their sex who have all got what it takes to succeed in life – I arrived on the river frontage where waves were crashing theatrically over the verandah as if, in reenactment of Botticelli’s Venus, each of these goddesses had just emerged triumphant from the Thames’ spray to delight the souls of mere mortals like myself.

The first Aphrodite to catch my eye was cheeky Bunny Sandie (pictured above), the seventh Bunny to join the newly opened Playboy Club in Park Lane in 1966, who is more formally known these days as Lady Sandra Bates. Within seconds of our introduction, Sandie gleefully revealed she had bedded Sean Connery, Frank Sinatra, Warren Beatty and Telly Savalas, emphasising that her most important conquest was Sir Charles Clore, owner of Selfridges and Mappin & Webb. “I was living in a house in Mayfair at the time, but the owner put it up for sale and wanted to throw me out, so I told Charles and he bought it for me!” she declared with a glittering smile, rolling her chestnut eyes, batting her eyelashes and clutching her hands in girlish pleasure. “You should see my art collection!” she proposed recklessly now that her husband Sir Charles is no more, as we shared a glass of wine on the veranda and the setting sun lit up the clouds, turning the river livid pink.

It was a remarkable overture to an unforgettable evening, because these girls all know how to party. Bunnies had flown in from all over the world, Tasmania, Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Egypt and as far away as Australia to celebrate the glory days of the British Playboy Club that ran from 1966 until 1980. As Marilyn Cole (the first full frontal nude in the history of Playboy in 1972) put it so elegantly in her speech of welcome, “When people ask ‘Where did you go to school?’ I say, ‘Fuck that, I went to the University of Playboy! You learn much more about life.’” An astute comment that drew roars of approval from the assembled Bunnies.

Marilyn, resplendent in a quilted leather miniskirt and thigh length high-heeled boots, ushered me over to meet her famously reclusive husband Victor Lownes, who opened the London Playboy Club. Formerly in charge of all Playboy’s gaming operations, Victor Lownes is a bon-viveur who was once Britain’s highest paid executive, counted Francis Bacon and Roman Polanski as friends and reputedly had five girls a day, sometimes two at once. He looked at me benignly from under a mop of white hair across the chasm of our different experiences of life. “Do you miss it?” I enquired tentatively, and Victor rolled his twinkly eyes in good-humoured irony. “What do you think? I am eighty-two years old!” he replied with dignified restraint.

There was a giddy atmosphere in the Grapes that night and so I chose to embrace the spirit of the occasion and mingle with as many Bunnies as possible. “I was a young girl from a very religious strict background in Birmingham who ran away from home.”admitted Bobbie, one of first black Bunnies, who worked at the Playboy Club from 1975-80, “I was shopping one day and I went along to ‘a cattle drive’ and out of fifty girls was one of a handful accepted to be a Bunny. I had four wonderful years that totally changed my life. It was a terrific experience. I have run my own business for the past twenty years and the things I learnt at Playboy set me on the road to be able to do that.”

“There was only one rule,’Don’t touch the Bunnies!’”explained Bunny Erica, raising a finger of authority,“Membership of the Playboy Club came with a key, which members handed in when they arrived and collected when they left. If somebody went too far the management took away their key. So the men always behaved respectfully. You were never forced to do anything. It’s made to seem cheap now – but we wore two pair of tights, our costumes were fitted and stiffened with whalebone, we even put toilet rolls down the front as padding – it was an illusion. We were supposed to share tips, but I put mine down my costume and when I took it off all the banknotes would fall out. The money was fabulous. Playboy gave us the most amazing part of our lives. It gave us freedom. It gave us a love of humanity. It enlightened us.”

“I was the very first UK Bunny to be hired in 1966,” declared Bunny Alexis, still glowing with pride over forty years later, “I was a dancer at the Talk of the Town in Leicester Sq on £12 a week, but at Playboy I earned £200. I was already married with a child and on the strength of my two years as a Bunny I was able to buy our first house in Wood Green. It was the hardest work, eight hours a day on five-inch heels with just one half hour break. But it was good fun and we met all the most amazing people. 1966 was a very good year!”

People often ask what happened to the nineteen sixties, yet here the evidence was all around me. It was a buzz to be in a room full of such self-confident women who knew who they were and were supremely comfortable with it too, women with their wits about them, who counted brains amongst other natural assets when it came to interactions with the opposite sex. Women who knew how to make the best of the situation they found themselves in at the Playboy Club –  unashamedly constructed as an arena of male fantasy yet, paradoxically, as all these women testify thirty years on, provided opportunities for them to take control of their lives.

Undoubtedly there were those that, as Bunny Serena put it succinctly, “screwed their way to the top,” but equally there were many who, as Bunny Lara confirmed, found it, “An empowering experience. They sent us on management training courses, and I learnt how to handle people and manage staff. All of which has come in useful ever since in everything I have done.” She now runs a young offenders’ programme, training staff in conflict management. Many women I spoke with occupy senior management roles in the gaming and entertainment industry today – including one who manages a chain of casinos – in jobs that would have been closed to them previously.

Above all, these were women who were full of life, they had seen so much life and had so many stories to tell, that it was wonderful simply to be amongst them, confirming Bunny Lara’s fond verdict on her experience working at the Playboy Club, “The camaraderie was phenomenal.”

Bunny Cleo, with evidence of her encounter with Sid James at The Playboy Club.

Marilyn Cole, “Whatever else happens in life, good, bad or indifferent, we can always say we had this!”

Bunny Maretta & Bunny friend.

Bunny Marisa is now an artist painting in oils.

Bunny Dilys & Bunny friend.

Bunny Alexis, ex-Windmill Girl was the very first UK Bunny to be recruited in 1966.

Bunny Serena & Bunny Jane.

Bunny Bobbie

Bunny Brenda, Bunny Nancy & Bunny Marion

Victor Lownes, “What is a playboy? It is someone who is getting more sex than you are.”

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

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Madame Bordello shows off her knickers

Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Sarah Ainslie & I set out to explore the knickers of Spitalfields, but we soon discovered it was such a large and voluminous subject, comprising an infinite variety of design and reflecting the multitudinous quirks of the human libido, that we were overwhelmed with a slew of scanties and spoilt for choice of pants, and we knew we needed to seek professional help.

Still glowing from a couple of hours circuit training, luscious blonde, Michele Scarr, welcomed us to Bordello in Great Eastern St where she has a magnificent display of panties to delight the eye and gladden the heart of all lingerie lovers. You never know what you might discover rummaging around in Michele’s drawers and closets, she has all manner of frilly and lacy things, some that would not look out of place on a Christmas tree and other that are so diaphanous and revealing that they are barely there at all. Michele’s wardrobes stuffed with exotic underwear offer sophisticated amusement for those who have outgrown Narnia and such is the insatiable demand for fancy pants in Shoreditch that her stock changes every two weeks. These are fast moving undies.

“I worked in the City for twenty years as an investment banker, but I was never really happy and I always dreamed of opening a lingerie shop of my own,” confessed Michele, who took voluntary redundancy and opened up Bordello three and a half years ago. “It’s a boudoir,” she explained enthusiastically, spreading her arms wide with the extravagant brio and grace of a burlesque dancer, “for entertaining girlfriends and lovers, preening and dressing up – it’s a female space and it’s about the empowerment of women.”

Just fifty yards along Great Eastern St, we plunged down a deep dark staircase into the basement premises of Great Expectations. As we descended the metal staircase, it was as if we were entering the lower depths of a secret military installation but instead we found ourselves in the United Kingdom’s largest fetish store for men. Leaving the feminine world of satin and lace to enter the masculine arena of leather and rubber, we exchanged the frippery of the boudoir for the hardware of the dungeon.

Yet, in spite of their fierce looks, the muscle hunks who preside here were softly spoken and greeted us sweetly. “We have been part of this community for thirty years,” revealed Colin Dixon, the manager, who had just come from fitting a customer for rubber suit, “I adore this job, it’s not paid terribly well but I enjoy coming to work each day because it’s always different – and we get to know our customers intimately when we are taking their measurements.” Colin asked me to inform readers that a bespoke service is available for rubber and leather wear, and repairs can also be carried out should boisterous activity cause your gear to get split or torn.

We learnt that it is no accident the biggest fetish store is here at the edge of the City of London. “You’d be surprised how many corporate types go to work wearing a pair of rubber pants under their suits,” confided Colin with a twinkle in his eye, “A significant number of our customers are high-flying City people.”

Over in Hoxton Sq, we dropped in next on Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium where unaccompanied men are not admitted except on Tuesdays between six and eight. Joanna Wierzbicka, the flirtatious manager, was fulsome in her advocacy of sexual diversity among her customers, “All kinds of women and their lovers are welcome here, transgender women as well.” she confirmed batting her eyelashes. Offering knickers for sale with the context of sexual exploration, Joanna is proud to offer a vital service to the local media and creative industries,“Quite a lot of them drop by after work to pick up a few things for the night,” she informed me with a knowing smile.

It was on leaving Sh! Sarah & I realised that, admirable as each of these three underwear outlets were in their distinctive ways, perhaps, in the fervour of our quest to investigate knickers we had favoured the exotic at the expense of the quotidian. This epiphany inspired us to return South and pay a visit to the good people at City Lingerie Ltd in the Whitechapel Rd where they sell thrifty underclothing in bulk.

Pants are available here from as little as one pound a pair and what they lack in style they make up in economy and volume. Yet the speciality is the bras that line the walls from floor to ceiling to such spectacular effect. Mr Ali, the genial proprietor who has been in ladies’ underwear for over twenty years, told me that an incredible three thousand bras pass through his hands each week, pointing out “The City Bra” which is his triumphant best seller, a pure cotton brassiere that retails at under ten pounds. “One day somebody left me some bras to sell,” he recalled, casting his eyes fondly upon the stack of crates of bras that filled the rear half of the shop, “And I thought,’The bra business is different.’ Now we are our own manufacturer and wholesaler.”

“It’s hard for ladies to find the right size,” he declared with a sympathetic shrug, “I enjoy satisfying my customers, they really appreciate it if they can get a bra that fits them at a bargain price.” Although modest and unassuming by nature, Mr Ali is a local hero to the women of Whitechapel.

It had been a long afternoon of underwear and Sarah & I had cast our eyes upon a lot of pants, but even as we reluctantly concluded the first day of our survey, we realised we had barely scratched the surface of the subject, and took comfort in the knowledge that there are still plenty of knickers yet to investigate in Spitalfields.

Practical styles at City Lingerie in Whitechapel with an emphasis on comfort and insulation.

Joanna Wierzbicka at Ssh! shows off her flamingo knickers.

At Bordello.

BJ at Great Expectations shows off his colourful jocks.

Racks of fancy scanties at Ssh!

Michele Scarr, also known as Madame Bordello, with her closet of satin bridal lingerie.

The economy range at City Lingerie.

Wardrobes of classy knickers at Bordello.

A hundred and fifty thousand bras pass through this man’s hands every year at City Lingerie.

Sassy frippery at Bordello.

Bargain pants at City Lingerie in Whitechapel.

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

There are some people you meet to whom you cannot say “No,” because it would simply be an affront to their overwhelming generosity of spirit, and the redoubtable Lady Sandra Bates (Bunny Sandie of 1966) who I met at the Bunny Girls’ Reunion at the Grapes in Limehouse is one such person.

So when Lady Sandra invited me and Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Sarah Ainslie to her sixty-fifth birthday bash in Mayfair, it would have been disingenuous not to accept. The truth is that we leapt at the invitation because, now that the season for celebration is upon us, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to make a rare foray up to the West End and become society reporters for a night, to permit our readers in the East End a glimpse of how the other half lives.

We were walking down Dover St through the driving snow in search of the party venue, and feeling far from our familiar East End streets, when three young ladies imbued with festive spirit rolled out of a taxi, so we thought it pertinent to ask them if they knew where Lady Sandra Bates’ birthday party was taking place. At the very mention of the magic name, all three lit up with delight and anticipation, and the tallest cried out “Batesy, you old bitch, where are you?” to the street, in a reckless shriek of bravado, which was a cause of great relief to us because we knew we had come to the right place.

Before we knew it we were ushered into a high class cellar, where the elite were gathering, drawn together by their shared affection for Lady Sandra Bates who held the focus of attention effortlessly, glittering magnificently in a gold-sequined top, which exemplified her larger than life disposition and sparkling personality. I quickly discovered that almost no-one knew anyone else, and everyone had a different story to tell about how they met Lady Sandra – in a nightclub toilet, or an art gallery in Kensington or at one of Jason’s famous networking parties, these were explanations that cropped up several times. Yet in spite of their diversity of background, everyone was excited to be here “in society,” unified by their passion for Lady Sandra who makes it her business to be the life and soul of any party. Undertaking an impromptu survey, I asked people what they admired most about Lady Sandra and the answered ranged from, “Her hair, eyelashes and nails” – “Her balls” – “Her smile” – “Her tenacity and determination”- “Her ability to bring people together,” to “Her propensity to go in the lift in her pyjamas.”

Lady Sandra’s daughter Charlotte confessed to me how much she admired her mother’s strength of character for taking advantage of the opportunities available to her as a Playboy Bunny in sixties’ London. “She bought her first house with the diamonds Sir Charles Clore gave her, you know?” she told me, flashing her eyes in wonder. Charlotte regaled me with happy childhood tales of learning to ride her bike in Grosvenor Square, and when her mother came to the school fete in a long black wig and ankle-length fur coat, and got drunk with the headmaster. I also had the pleasure of an introduction to mild-mannered East Ender, Frank Gregory, Lady Sandra’s Bates’ gentleman, owner of a Lancia dealership and a block of flats in Whitechapel, or as she put it succinctly, “the one who buys my diamonds and furs, darling.”

The surprise of the evening was an encounter with the amiable Sean McGuigan, full of swagger and charm, flashing a rakish gold tooth, and showing off the flask of vodka that he had concealed “down me nuts.” He was delirious with glee to brag of his recent release from prison following a conviction for blackmailing the Royal family – the first attempt in over a century. The next guest to swerve into my field of vision was a fresh faced thirty-eight year old, Crystyl, from California who explained that she was delighted to be here in London because everyone at parties in Los Angeles looked young. And then she proceeded to share her discovery that Vaseline applied to the lower eyelids takes eight years off your age, as well as being cheaper and less invasive than Botox.

At last, in the midst of the lively throng vying for her attention, hungry myself to gather further morsels of information about Lady Sandra’s charmed life, I managed to snatch the privilege of a few intimate moments with the birthday girl herself. Batting her eyelashes seductively and displaying a blissful smile, she told me she woke to glass of champagne that morning, then it was off to Princess Margaret’s hairdresser to get spruced up, followed by tea at the Ritz with her two daughters. Getting a little dreamy when she admitted that she took a sentimental moment to think of George Best, with whom she once opened a club, Blondes in Dover St, and gazing up into my eyes, for a moment, in her reverie she had the look of a lost child. “That’s all I know, darling, is Dover St.” she declared – as if it were a summation of her existence – flicking her wrist in a gesture of louche resignation and assuming a tone of dreamy innocence. Then she confided she had received a diamond ring worth a quarter of a million and a Gucci handbag that cost nine hundred and fifty pounds.

When I asked about her future plans, entering her sixty-fifth year, Lady Sandra told me that she has bought “a little place in Covent Garden with a turret,” where she plans to set up a salon with all her young artists that she patronises around her. The model is Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, she explained. Apparently “Hef” has a turret where he surrounds himself with young ladies and now Lady Sandra, with characteristic flamboyance, plans to surround herself with talent in the same way. And if that is how Lady Sandra chooses to grow old gracefully, who are we to deny her such extravagant dreams?

Reluctantly, Sarah and I had to slip away from the party before midnight to catch the bus home, our heads spinning with the night’s adventures, yet although I was delighted to have glimpsed another world – almost like a painting by William Hogarth come to life – I must confess I was not unhappy to return to my modest existence in the East End.

Watch a short film of Lady Sandra Bates introducing herself by clicking here.

Three belles from Berkhamsted, Carole, Jane and Carolynne.

Fay met Lady Sandra in a nightclub toilet and Elaine met Lady Sandra at an art gallery.

Ed with new friends Wendy and Yang.

Lady Sandra and her daughter Charlotte, with legendary DJ Fitz Brown from Tramps – back in the glory days when Catherine Zeta-Jones and Mick Hucknall were dating.

Actress Maggie Steed raises a birthday toast to Lady Sandra Bates.

Maggie Steed with Mr & Mrs Collins, a happily divorced couple.

Elizabeth & Crystyl from Los Angeles by way of South Woodford.

Theodora, Davina and Lady Sandra Bates’ gentleman Frank Gregory.

Sean McGuigan and Genevieve, celebrating six months since Sean’s release from prison.

The ever-radiant Lady Sandra Bates with her proud daughters, Camilla and Charlotte.

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

These pictures illustrate what happens when you put a stripper and an eminent oral historian together in a photobooth. It was the perfect way to record the outcome of the our first Chit-Chat presented last week at Rough Trade East, with Lara Clifton celebrated stripper of Shoreditch in conversation with Clive Murphy, oral historian of Spitalfields and writer of ribald rhymes. For those of you who were not able to be there, here are a few excerpts to give you a flavour of the occasion.

Clive: When I was told I was going to interview a stripper, I was very amazed and very honoured, and I was told there was a photo of you and it’s the most outrageous photo I have ever seen in my life! Are you an exhibitionist by nature?

Lara: I guess I must be.

Clive: Because of lot of people do this (I’ve been to Raymond Revuebar and so on) because they are very shy. It’s very, very strange, they overcome their shyness by stripping

Lara: I completely associate with that, I’m a very shy person.

Clive: Would you like to tell me your first professional performance?

Lara: My very first job was at the Nag’s Head on Whitechapel High St and there was a certain circuit of pubs that we did. It used to be that you were paid to be there (given money to cover your travel), but when I was there it got worse, you were only paid the money that was in your pot – though you didn’t actually have to pay to be there like you do now.

Clive: I’ve read that you had a different way of performing to most strippers…

Lara: I used to jump off the stage with my knickers round my ankles and then run through the crowd because it was funny. Everyone came off the stage and jumped from table to table, but I was maybe a bit more hysterical in my delivery – it made the other girls laugh.

Clive: What do you think of the feminist point of view, that you’re demeaning yourself and you’re opening yourself up to men who will despise you?

Lara: I think it’s wrong. They haven’t been in a strip club if they think that’s the way, there isn’t any victimisation going on there, aside from men being asked to put money in the pot. I think it’s a very fair exchange.

Clive: How do you deal with the hostile punters?

Lara: It’s part of the job that you deal with customers and if anyone’s really awful they get kicked out. You get less verbal abuse from men in a strip club than you would in any other pub on a Friday night. Really the only way to offend a stripper is to not give her a pound in the jug.

Clive: You said the clubs were dying out in this area?

Lara: Yes, they are closing them down right now in Hackney and all of the strippers are campaigning against it, but their word is not valid apparently.

Clive: The White Horse is one that I go into …

Lara: That’s one that is in danger.

Clive: …and I just see people doing the crossword in there.

Lara: Yes, it’s genteel of an afternoon.

Clive: Did you dance entirely nude?

Lara: Yes.

Clive: That was ahead of its time wasn’t it?

Lara: No, no, it has been going on a long time in the East End.

Clive: And did you allow people to touch you?

Lara: No, that’s why it was fun because they knew they weren’t allowed, so you could charge at them and they would all run away because they knew they weren’t allowed to touch.

Clive: I thought that was the whole fun of it, trying to touch you.

Lara: Those were different clubs. It used to be even that if anyone had a camera you stilettoed it.

Clive: I knew you were physical! I have done a lot of interviewing but not of sex bombs. Shall we be natural now and every question I ask, you take off one item of clothing?

Lara: I will if you will.

Clive: You’ve called my bluff! So you don’t hate men, humiliating them by making them drool?

Lara: No. Lots of punters become good friends. You rely on regulars, because it’s more or less the same crowd of people that you see every day in all the pubs.

Clive: They become addicted?

Lara: It’s like trainspotting but more fun!

Clive: Did you go into it for money? Did you find it paid so much better than a humdrum job from nine to five, that you preferred it for that reason above all others?

Lara: Not above, but everyone works for money, so you might as well do something you like.

Clive: So you do enjoy stripping?

Lara: Mmm.

Clive: Is there anything else you want to say?

Lara: Let me ask you about oral history, why did you chose to come and live in Spitalfields and talk to people?

Clive: Because I am very interested in people, their background and why they are where are they now. I had done interviews in Pimlico but then I came to live here because a room was vacant at four pounds a month.

Lara: Yowsa! What people did you interview?

Clive: Lavatory attendants, two of them, a male and female and they were both published and I was asked would I do a hermaphroditic one next – but I think they had their tongue in their cheek a bit! I came here and I did an East End Hosteller and a Singer.

Lara: So my book is similar? It’s an oral history of strippers

Clive: Yes, but I did a whole book about each person.

Lara: Amazing!

Questions from the audience.

Question: What’s the situation with Hackney Council trying to close down the clubs?

Lara: All the strippers are writing in and saying this shouldn’t happen. Yet it looks like its going to happen anyway, even those places that have been here a very long time, even before the rich people started moving in. It’s part of this area’s heritage and history, and if we lose the strip clubs not only will a whole body of women lose their income but it’s a vibrant part of what the East End has always been. I think it would go underground, but the pubs manage the laws, so once it goes underground you loose all the rules and it becomes a lot more dangerous for the women.

Question: Do you think social mores with regard to stripping are changing?

Lara: I think people are getting a lot more prudey.  The right wing and feminists are almost on the same line at the moment and that I find odd. I can understand how it’s evolved that way but I think there’s a fundamentalism around sexuality which is growing.

Question: Could it be due to the Islamic community?

Lara: But Muslims love strip clubs! Of course they come, everyone comes. One of the most amazing things about going in a strip club is the different people that are in there, the different classes and the different races. There isn’t one type of man that comes to a strip club, you get a variety of different types of men. I did a strip at a Muslim club on Green Lanes. There are also female Muslim strippers who work mostly on the underground scene. They say if their families found out they would be in trouble, but they are doing it because they enjoy doing it and they want to do it, not because they have to.

Question: Can you tell me about the history of stripping in the East End?

Lara: The strippers that I know now in their fifties were working as go-go dancers in the sixties, but there’s also evidence of Victorian strippers who stripped on metal trays with a candle nearby that would show their reflection, but I think they just stripped under their skirts. There’s a painting in Sir John Soane’s Museum that shows a girl holding a tray and that’s what she’s about to do.

Clive: I’ve got a marvellous idea, what about people arriving naked and then dressing slowly – they bring a costume in a bag and then as the evening goes on everyone gets dressed.

Lara: Sounds good! When shall we do that?

Hessel St is named in remembrance of Phoebe Hessel (born 1713), known as the “Amazon of Stepney” who dressed as a man to enlist in the army to be with her lover – an honourable example which demonstrates that trannies are an integral part of the culture and history of the East End. And I am proud to report that this venerable tradition still flourishes today, reaching its exuberant zenith each year at “London’s Next Top Tranny Contest” held at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Social Club.

It was my privilege to sit at the head of the catwalk, surrounded by a raucous and appreciative crown, to witness these glamorous extravagant flowers at close quarters as they competed furiously in last week’s nail-biting contest finale. Yet before proceedings commenced, Russella – our long-legged pole dancing hostess in pink glitter – confessed her motives with a refreshing lack of false modesty, redefining the terms of the contest unambiguously.

“Why would I want to give the title of London’s Top Tranny to someone less talented and less good looking than myself? That’s why I am the host tonight, because the winner will be London’s Next Top Tranny – after me. They will be London’s Next Top Tranny when I die. In other words, over my dead body…” she declared, fluttering her spidery eyelashes as she twisted her sparkly lips into an insouciant smile and tossed her blonde locks with self conscious grace.

Once the unassailable Russella had asserted her alpha-tranny status, it was time to bring on the contestants, Miss Cairo, Fancy Chance, Stephanie, Polly Sexual, Jean Benett and Strawberry Pickles, and what a gorgeous display of unapologetically ambiguous gender they presented – to delight the most jaded eye and uplift the weariest spirit. Six brave souls who had cast aside conventional notions of dignity in the quest for greatness. Lacking breasts, possessing male body hair (and in one case having a beard), none of these contestants aspired literally to be taken for women, instead they had adopted female trappings to aid them in exaggerated variations upon the performance of femininity. And, as if to emphasise the point, Russella even staged an uproarious cookery demonstration making pancakes on stage.

Running through the evening was a compelling dramatic tension between the trannies’ performances that invite our suspension of disbelief and their clunky pantomime outfits which simultaneously remind us of their wearers’ inauthentic gender. These fearless trannies incarnate a persuasive poetry. It is a question of how far are you prepared to go to humiliate yourself for the sake of becoming fabulous.

And these trannies held nothing back, embracing challenges to retain dignity while walking in wildly mis-matched ill-fitting shoes, displaying extreme emotions while blasted by a wind machine, drinking copious amounts of of cider, and eating live worms, raw meat and dog food. Stephanie, a shy senior tranny in a bridal gown, won affection early on for tottering in ill-matched heels displaying swollen ankles and varicose veins, and then, as if to dispel the audience’s pity, won a round of applause for eating a whole can of dog food. Other memorable highlights included Miss Cairo’s supermodel walk sustained while wearing a wooden clog and a five inch heel, Polly Sexual’s glorious dress woven from yellow and black hazard tape, Strawberry Pickles’ soulful appeal for drag queen asylum to prevent her being sent back to Sarah Palin’s America, Jean Benett’s curiously Gwyneth Paltrow-like enactment of constipation, and Fancy Chance’s performance as the artist formerly known as Prince, which made such ingenious use of an aerosol of cream and drew deafening shrieks of joy from the crowd.

It all came down to two contenders. Strawberry Pickles, distinguished by her relentless cheerfulness and Fancy Chance who accomplished that rare stage feat of being mean and charming at the same time. She was the dark horse of the contest, wearing trousers and exuding masculinity, I wrongly assumed Fancy was a man performing as a manly woman. Only part-way through the contest did I realise that Fancy Chance was the only entrant going in the opposite direction to the others, from woman to man. She had taken me in from the start. So it was only just that she won, though friends were surprised next day when I said I had been to a tranny contest and a woman won – though I have no doubt Phoebe Hessel would have approved of the result.

There is a strange nobility in the trannies’ condition, emerging from the shadowlands of gender into the limelight, so proud and flamboyant, craving attention like children, and seeking affection and respect for their fabulousness. We love them for their excess, their devotion to sentimental songs and inability to lipsynch, their make-up that smears, their wigs that come off and their trashy costumes that come apart. We cherish their magnificent failures. We love them for their audacity. They are delicate creatures of the nighttime and we do not want to know where they go in the daytime, because there is an elusive magic to these vibrant personalities unlocked by cross-dressing.

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

Find out more about the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Social Club at www.workersplaytime.net

On Sunday night, I attended the most glamorous party of my life. It was a Bunny Girls & Playboy Models’ reunion hosted by ex-Bunny Barbara Haigh, esteemed landlady of The Grapes in Limehouse. Never have I encountered more voluptuous charismatic ladies per square metre than were crammed joyfully together in the tiny bar-rooms of this historic riverside pub that night. With Sarah Ainslie, Spitalfields Life contributing photographer, as my chaperone, I was thrilled to join this exuberant sisterhood of more than a hundred garrulous alpha females for a knees-up. Squeezing my way through the curvy bodies – fine specimens of their sex who have all got what it takes to succeed in life – I arrived on the river frontage where waves were crashing theatrically over the verandah as if, in reenactment of Botticelli’s Venus, each of these goddesses had just emerged triumphant from the Thames’ spray to delight the souls of mere mortals like myself.

The first Aphrodite to catch my eye was cheeky Bunny Sandie (pictured above), the seventh Bunny to join the newly opened Playboy Club in Park Lane in 1966, who is more formally known these days as Lady Sandra Bates. Within seconds of our introduction, Sandie gleefully revealed she had bedded Sean Connery, Frank Sinatra, Warren Beatty and Telly Savalas, emphasising that her most important conquest was Sir Charles Clore, owner of Selfridges and Mappin & Webb. “I was living in a house in Mayfair at the time, but the owner put it up for sale and wanted to throw me out, so I told Charles and he bought it for me!” she declared with a glittering smile, rolling her chestnut eyes, batting her eyelashes and clutching her hands in girlish pleasure. “You should see my art collection!” she proposed recklessly now that her husband Sir Charles is no more, as we shared a glass of wine on the verandah and the setting sun lit up the clouds, turning the river livid pink.

It was a remarkable overture to an unforgettable evening, because these girls all know how to party. Bunnies had flown in from all over the world, Tasmania, Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Egypt and as far away as Australia to celebrate the glory days of the British Playboy Club that ran from 1966 until 1980. As Marilyn Cole (the first full frontal nude in the history of Playboy in 1972) put it so elegantly in her speech of welcome, “When people ask ‘Where did you go to school?’ I say, ‘Fuck that, I went to the University of Playboy! You learn much more about life.’” An astute comment that drew roars of approval from the assembled Bunnies.

Marilyn, resplendent in a quilted leather miniskirt and thigh length high-heeled boots, ushered me over to meet her famously reclusive husband Victor Lownes, who opened the London Playboy Club. Formerly in charge of all Playboy’s gaming operations, Victor Lownes is a bon-viveur who was once Britain’s highest paid executive, counted Francis Bacon and Roman Polanski as friends and reputedly had five girls a day, sometimes two at once. He looked at me benignly from under a mop of white hair across the chasm of our different experiences of life. “Do you miss it?” I enquired tentatively, and Victor rolled his twinkly eyes in good-humoured irony. “What do you think? I am eighty-two years old!” he replied with dignified restraint.

There was a giddy atmosphere in the Grapes that night and so I chose to embrace the spirit of the occasion and mingle with as many Bunnies as possible. “I was a young girl from a very religious strict background in Birmingham who ran away from home.”admitted Bobbie, one of first black Bunnies, who worked at the Playboy Club from 1975-80, “I was shopping one day and I went along to ‘a cattle drive’ and out of fifty girls was one of a handful accepted to be a Bunny. I had four wonderful years that totally changed my life. It was a terrific experience. I have run my own business for the past twenty years and the things I learnt at Playboy set me on the road to be able to do that.”

“There was only one rule,’Don’t touch the Bunnies!’”explained Bunny Erica, raising a finger of authority,“Membership of the Playboy Club came with a key, which members handed in when they arrived and collected when they left. If somebody went too far the management took away their key. So the men always behaved respectfully. You were never forced to do anything. It’s made to seem cheap now – but we wore two pair of tights, our costumes were fitted and stiffened with whalebone, we even put toilet rolls down the front as padding – it was an illusion. We were supposed to share tips, but I put mine down my costume and when I took it off all the banknotes would fall out. The money was fabulous. Playboy gave us the most amazing part of our lives. It gave us freedom. It gave us a love of humanity. It enlightened us.”

“I was the very first UK Bunny to be hired in 1966,” declared Bunny Alexis, still glowing with pride over forty years later, “I was a dancer at the Talk of the Town in Leicester Sq on £12 a week, but at Playboy I earned £200. I was already married with a child and on the strength of my two years as a Bunny I was able to buy our first house in Wood Green. It was the hardest work, eight hours a day on five-inch heels with just one half hour break. But it was good fun and we met all the most amazing people. 1966 was a very good year!”

People often ask what happened to the nineteen sixties, yet here the evidence was all around me. It was a buzz to be in a room full of such self-confident women who knew who they were and were supremely comfortable with it too, women with their wits about them, who counted brains amongst other natural assets when it came to interactions with the opposite sex. Women who knew how to make the best of the situation they found themselves in at the Playboy Club –  unashamedly constructed as an arena of male fantasy yet, paradoxically, as all these women testify thirty years on, provided opportunities for them to take control of their lives.

Undoubtably there were those that, as Bunny Serena put it succinctly, “screwed their way to the top,” but equally there were many who, as Bunny Lara confirmed, found it, “An empowering experience. They sent us on management training courses, and I learnt how to handle people and manage staff. All of which has come in useful ever since in everything I have done.” She now runs a young offenders’ programme, training staff in conflict management. Many women I spoke with occupy senior management roles in the gaming and entertainment industry today – including one who manages a chain of casinos – in jobs that would have been closed to them previously.

Above all, these were women who were full of life, they had seen so much life and had so many stories to tell, that it was wonderful simply to be amongst them, confirming Bunny Lara’s fond verdict on her experience working at the Playboy Club, “The camaraderie was phenomenal.”

Bunny Cleo, with evidence of her encounter with Sid James at The Playboy Club.

Marilyn Cole, “Whatever else happens in life, good, bad or indifferent, we can always say we had this!”

Bunny Maretta & Bunny friend

Bunny Marisa is now an artist painting in oils.

Bunny Dilys & Bunny friend.

Bunny Alexis, ex-Windmill Girl was the very first UK Bunny to be recruited in 1966.

Bunny Serena & Bunny Jane.

Bunny Bobbie

Bunny Brenda, Bunny Nancy & Bunny Marion

Victor Lownes, “What is a playboy? It is someone who is getting more sex than you are.”

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

Last night, I met a nice girl called Lara for a drink in The Pride of Spitalfields with her good friend Sarah, a photographer. Superficially, if you were introduced to the fresh-faced Lara Clifton and she flashed her dark eyes and her lovely gap-toothed smile that gives her an appealing aura of gaucheness, you might assume she was once a member of the Brownies or the Pony Club. You would certainly recognise her as a well-brought-up girl. You would never in a million years guess that she enjoyed a successful career as a stripper. You would not believe that it is her in the picture above. But Lara has far more sophistication, intelligence and moral courage than meets the eye upon first introduction.

“My flatmate started doing it,” says Lara, explaining how she began, “And I was shocked until I realised that it was less exploitative and better paid than the office temping I was doing. It was a more honest form of commerce and a lot of the girls enjoyed doing it. It was not sleazy or seedy.”

I was startled to hear this because I perceived stripping as a degrading activity that humiliates women, but this is not Lara’s view. Commenting on the notion of the dominant male gaze, Lara proposes a different perspective, “The punters are like little boys in a sweet shop, it’s a gentle gaze, it’s passive, very respectful. Everyone knows what’s going on. Nothing is hidden.” And Lara speaks warmly of the relationships between the girls too, “There is this genuine camaraderie. You quickly get to know people if you are naked together.” In Lara’s description, it sounds like they enjoyed a high old time, “The girls used to jump from table to table, it was like a crazy circus. They were the best group of people ever.”

Lara is quick to qualify her comments, emphasising that she can only speak for her own experience. And I must applaud her audacity in making such a brave career move because, even if Lara took to stripping like the proverbial duck to water, I have no doubt it took strong nerves to step out naked in public and laudable self-confidence to be open about what she did when there are plenty who would not hesitate to censure. Lara explained the routine to me whereby three women would perform in sequence during an evening, giving three shows each over three hours and passing the jug around before every strip. In Lara’s eyes, it was entirely preferable to the many more hours temping in an office to earn a comparable sum. I was intrigued by Lara’s interpretation of the power relationship between stripper and punter and it was my understanding that a strip ended at the moment of full nudity, but I learnt this not the case in Lara’s world. She ran around the pub naked, performing not on a stage but commanding the whole space, though, significantly, Lara always kept her high heels on, as the symbol of her dominant status within the performance arena over which she held control.

One day, Lara put a note on the changing room wall requesting written contributions from her fellow strippers and quickly found she had enough material for a book. Before long, Lara met photographers Sarah Ainslie and Julie Cook, who visited the pubs and the dressing rooms recording every aspect of the culture in hundreds of arrestingly candid and delicate pictures. “It was a gift,” admitted Sarah,“I drifted in and out for months, so I built a relationship with the girls.” “We forgot she was there,” says Lara, which is quite remarkable considering that in most pubs a single toilet served as makeshift changing room for all the dancers.

Three years in the making, the result is “Baby Oil & Ice – Striptease in East London”, a large format full-colour hardback limited edition book of nearly two hundred pages edited by Lara, that blends writing and photographic imagery together to create a broad and authoritative picture of the particular hidden world of East End striptease. “I wanted to capture something that was dying,” says Lara fondly, but she has achieved far more. Her remarkable book is an exuberant celebration, created by women, of the life, poetry and contradictions of this entirely absurd practice of a woman cavorting naked in clunky high heels for the pleasure of a mesmerised (and paradoxically emasculated) bunch of fully dressed men. Previous books about stripping were written by journalists and academics with their own moral agendas, but Lara’s book is important because it is the first written by performers  - allowing the voices of real live strippers, who are usually silent, to speak in their own unedited words.

Until very recently, there were several pubs in Shoreditch that hosted stripping and formed a circuit for the performers, Ye Olde Axe, The Royal Oak, The Spreadeagle, Browns, The Crown & Shuttle and The Norfolk Village. Now this has ceased and some are closed entirely, although Lara says The White Horse still has strippers. Lara gave up when table dancing came in, because it took away the quality of performance from girls who could no long do their acts with their own music, and “I was rubbish at getting money out of people,” admits Lara wryly and somewhat unconvincingly.

You can buy a copy of  ”Baby Oil & Ice” direct from Lara Clifton for £25 and she will sign it for you personally. Definitely a collectors’ item. Simply email  lclifton76@gmail.com

“I think that your private body and your public body are very different…”

“My pleasure in stripping comes from the eye contact with customers that makes you conspirators. Over the years, I’ve had to learn how to engage this unspoken rapport in subtle ways – in stages that evolve gradually because the norm provides a natural distance from the client, which to my mind has to be breached, psychologically rather than physically. Effectively, the seduction, the tease is in the implied relationship not in the nudity…”

“Stripping was, in a lot of places, less of a spectator sport than it is now. Most places had no stage, which made the dancing environment more intimate, and probably then, inevitably, more interactive. Hands had to be playfully pushed away, baby oil and ice were commonplace props, and once, quite early on I had the misfortune of working with a girl who shot ping pong balls from between her legs into your pint glass!”

Professionally Speaking

“The job makes you realise how insecure most men are. They put on this front to make them look macho. The more sad and insecure they are, the more they have to hide behind this front. Men are all kids. They’ll never grow up. I’ll never hate men.”

“Whether you are young or old, rich or poor, a gentleman or a complete tosser, the love of beautiful naked girls will have all types of men in the same room. By having alcohol mixed with testosterone, I see a different side of men that most women will never get to see and I definitely know I am a lot less naive for having seen it. I use this information to decide what kind of person I want to be with in my private life.”

Stripper photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

Photograph of Ye Olde Axe copyright © Julie Cook