Buffy and Heaven, from podcast Strippers In The Attic take us through what Christmas in a strip club is really like...
December is the biggest month in the London Stripping Calendar – it’s the most lucrative time of year and there's something about the holidays that makes everyone act a little crazy. We’re going to miss it this year. The madness begins straight after Hallowe’en then the strip clubs are decked out as though elves had thrown up everywhere – it’s like Santa’s Grotty Grotto with leopard pink tinsel draped across the stage, plastic mistletoe pinned above every doorway, lights that if they don’t flash off-beat 360 times a minute, then they’re not tacky enough for the club and giant gold baubles hanging precariously from the ceiling. The number of times drunk strippers would get trapped in Christmas decorations doesn’t bear thinking about.
During the month, every strip club in London allows more girls on each shift to cope with demand and the dressing room is not equipped to handle us all. Imagine a narrow 8ft long corridor filled with lockers, shoes and bags, forty plus strippers all in a hurry, all wanting to use the plug sockets and mirrors at the same time, talking in 78 different languages and surviving on tequila and takeaway food. It’s the opposite of sexy.
The girls are all in fancy dress. At the club we worked pre-pandemic, the owner insisted on costumes – and pretty much all the shops have to offer is elves, Santa or reindeer. Most of the costumes are pretty bad. Usually the reindeer costumes look much more like a moose and, as the DJ has a seasonal playlist, you’ll be lumbering round a betinsled stage looking like Bullwinkle. Trying to give off an erotic vibe to Hi Ho Silver Lining is a special kind of challenge.
Heaven’s costume is a one size fits all sexy Mrs Claus from Ann Summers. Let’s be clear here – one size does not fit all. Especially when you’re five foot nothing. It’s very very baggy, and the belt droops around her thighs. Buffy has her outfit custom made – a BDSM look based on Coco de Mer’s Persephone set underneath dark red hotpants. We all only have one outfit each, so they get pretty crusty after four weeks of triple shifts.
By Christmas Day the office parties, drunk ladies, flashy clients paying £800 to take you to dinner and city boys snorting too much low-grade cocaine having accidents in their trousers and trying to flush their underpants down the loo have faded away. The Brazilian and Ukrainian strippers have all flown home. Most dancers have been working double, sometimes triple shifts in order to make the most of the season and have jacked it in on Christmas Eve after singing Last Christmas with a bunch of regulars wearing felt reindeer antlers.
So, the Christmas Day crew are the hardcore. It’s a special kind of special. Everyone has lost their minds after months of extra shifts and hard drinking. We’re Jedi stripper veterans and we know the best times to make our money. There’s fewer clients but they’re usually exceptionally generous. It’s not for the fainthearted though. The day unfolds with all sorts of emotions. You might have somebody weeping alone in the corner or people going balls out for a party
As we arrive, half of the decorations have fallen down and there’s an air of melancholy about the place. The first through the door are people escaping from family, people who have no family and people who do not give a shit about their family. Then you get the second wave – those who don’t celebrate Christmas for religious reasons. If this ain’t your holiday, there's nothing else open except strip clubs and Chinese restaurants.
Finally, you get the regulars, often here to see a favourite stripper. That’s when things really lift off. They almost always bring presents. Depending on the client and the stripper, these can be very generous or very weird. We tend to get both. Heaven is a full girlfriend experience princess trash pony. When she started out, they’d be bringing her boxes of Quality Street. The longer she’s been in the industry, the better the presents have become. Recent gifts include a Louis Vuitton bag, a pair of Louboutins and a couple of iPhones. Buffy gives off more of a Russian spy/Mrs Robinson vibe. Last year she got a stainless steel necklace that looked like a vagina.
There are a couple of customers who come in every Christmas Day in matching Christmas jumpers and sit in the front row with a sack of really useless presents. Nylon tights from M&S, stuff like that. One would always want to give a present to you as you stepped off stage. He’d leap up, hand you a present and you’d have to give him a hug – but he’d had some health problems so his grip was incredibly strong, he had cataracts in his eyes and he’d be pulling you half off stage. He was very sweet, bless him, but there were nearly so many accidents.
By the evening, it’s pretty much winding down. You take your time, talk to all the guys who have no other place go and do your best to make them feel good. Being a stripper is more like being a therapist that almost anything else, and on Christmas day that’s more true than ever. But if you’re good, if you can lift people’s spirits, you’re guaranteed to have a great day. The money is good, the mood is strangely moving and don’t get hung up on the transactional thing.
Buffy and Heaven's podcast, Strippers In The Attic, is available to listen to now.