It’s Saturday night and I’m trying not to stare as a half-naked man drops to the floor next to me and starts doing push-ups. A few other blokes are watching videos on their phones. A guy walks in and playfully slaps another man’s arse. You see some weird things on the Central line. Just kidding. Tonight, I’m in a club on City Road, hanging out backstage with the Dreamboys, ‘the UK’s most famous male strippers’.
‘It’s a rush, I can’t quite explain it,’ says Shane Finlayson, 35, who has been stripping since he was 18 and has the manicured facial hair and baby-faced charm of a boyband member. ‘The first time I did a full-frontal I was so nervous I bought a litre of vodka, drank three quarters of it before I went on stage and was a mess. Now, when I walk out it feels like when you’re with your best mates on holiday. You hear the screams, the lights go up, the boys are all smiling, your chest goes out, you step on the stage… boom!’
Once the preserve of cheesy hen dos, male strippers are having a moment. Channing Tatum is back in the thong for Magic Mike’s Last Dance, which is out next week and set in London. Magic Mike Live continues to pull in the crowds at The Hippodrome. Then there’s Welcome to Chippendales, the Disney+ drama which captures the dark story of the dance troupe’s founder Somen Banerjee, who was convicted of murder-for-hire but found dead in his cell before sentencing.
But whether male strippers are in or out of fashion, the Dreamboys have been hip-thrusting away since 1987. They were founded by London hairdresser Bari Bacco as a male modelling agency, but Bacco realised he’d make more money if the guys took their clothes off, too. His topless ‘hunks’ per for med for Barbara Windsor, Bananarama and even Princess Diana, who reportedly told one Dreamboy: ‘you’re not wearing very much tonight!’
The Dreamboys brand is now owned by Alice Woods, 30, from Canada Water, who claims to be the first woman in history to own a male strip show. ‘Sometimes it does feel like being a babysitter to 80 overgrown muscly toddlers,’ says Woods, whose previous jobs included the rather different worlds of classical music and investment banking.
I remember a show that we did recently where a woman started playing with herself in the front row
‘This business attracts people with egos so a lot of my job is managing personalities. But I’m really proud of what I do. It feels like a win for feminism and female empowerment.’ The best part of her job? ‘It is quite satisfying to tell a man, “take your top off”, and then get to make an assessment,’ she laughs. Woods says the audience is 98 per cent women, from 18 to a 102-year-old whose ‘dying wish was to see male strippers.’
With his long curly hair tied back in a bun, tortoiseshell glasses and black skinny jeans, Thorpe Mills, 22, looks like any east London hipster. In fact he’s the Dreamboys newest recruit. ‘It is crazy to be objectified in this way,’ he says. ‘But you get objectified all the time; you might as well get paid for it. People come because they want to feel horny. We invite women to let their hair down completely and it’s great to see that side of them.’
Sometimes the audience let their hair down a little too much. ‘I’ve had bite marks on my bum, bleeding through my T-shirt, claw marks,’ says PJay Finch, 33, who’s been a stripper for 15 years. ‘I had one woman try and pull my willy off. I remember a show we did recently, a woman started playing with herself in the front row. Part of me was like, “It’s cool you’re having a good time”, but we do feel like fresh meat.’
‘Girls run on stage, throw underwear at you, start stripping themselves,’ chimes in Finlayson. ‘At a gig in Leicester, all the girls came running up to us afterwards and security couldn’t cope. They were grabbing at us and we were totally surrounded. A couple of the boys had panic attacks.’
For this reason they have to be selective about who they choose from the crowd to bring up on stage. ‘You want the unexpected,’ says Finch. ‘I always choose the older woman, the woman in the wheelchair, the gay guy… the crowd loves it.’ The more experienced strippers know to avoid picking anyone too drunk. ‘If she’s been day drinking and she’s too out of it then your whole number’s ruined,’ says Finlayson.
Lotan Carter, 33, is lying on a couch in ripped jeans and Converse. He’s been stripping for 13 years and although he tried to retire in February to take a corporate job, it wasn’t for him. ‘I was like pirouetting and doing back flips in the office,’ he says. ‘I’ve got ADHD so I’ll never suit a 9-5.’
The Dreamboys earn upwards of £150 per show, but for all of them it seems to be about more than just the money. ‘Stripping for me has been a way of getting acceptance over my own body,’ says Mills. ‘I’ve definitely struggled with my body image over the years.’ He seems to really care about his craft. ‘I’m a cowboy in the second act and I really… become that,’ he says.
For others, it’s a way of launching a career in the spotlight. Finch went on Married at First Sight, Finlayson has appeared in some short films and Mills would love to audition for Love Island. ‘You don’t want to be stripping forever,’ says Finlayson, who currently works part-time in an insurance business. ‘Yeah,’ agrees Finch. ‘I’m only 33 and I can already feel it in my knees.’
Of course, it takes a lot of time in the gym to get ‘strip fit’. Finlayson frets that he’s ‘not in the best shape since Christmas’. Do they use penis pumps like in Magic Mike? ‘Oh yeah, all of that,’ grins Finch. ‘Lots of baby oil, some guys use syrup on stage. Backstage you probably have someone watching porn, working himself up… so many tricks of the trade.’
Although they get propositioned all the time — and Mills admits to ‘one or two hook ups’ — the guys all complain that maintaining a relationship is difficult. Finlayson has had a girlfriend for a year and a half and ‘she doesn’t really enjoy [my job] too much,’ he grimaces. ‘Telling a woman you’re a stripper is like a massive red flag,’ says Finch.
Although there seems to be great camaraderie and closeness between the guys, they say that sometimes there can be jealousy. ‘In the past you used to always get one guy who’s sour and bitter,’ says Finch. ‘Maybe they got more attention from the crowd, or more gifts given to them after the show.’
The older cohort say that a lot of things have changed since they started out in this business. ‘When I first got into stripping everyone was sleeping with everyone,’ says Finlayson. ‘My ex-boss had this massive mansion and people were constantly going back there after shows for wild parties. Everyone was doing drugs and drinking. Now it’s not really like that.’
Finch says they’re too tired for much debauchery these days. ‘Most of us just get back on the tour bus, stick Harry Potter on and get kebab meat and chips,’ he says. ‘You’re covered in all that baby oil — all you really want is a shower.’
The original Dreamboys never performed full-frontal nudity — according to Bacco the G-string was the dividing line between eroticism and obscenity — but times have changed. Now the thongs are out, in favour of tight black briefs, and only a couple of the boys perform the ‘full frontal moment’, including Finch who says ‘once you’ve done it, it’s like riding a bike… now I feel weird if I’m not naked.’
As the opening bars of Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’ blare out, the boys peek out from behind a black curtain at their expectant crowd. A sea of willy-shaped deely-boppers hover above the dry ice and the lights. ‘It’s game time!’ says Finlayson and the Dreamboys fist-bump and wish each other a good show. And what a show it is. I laughed, I gasped, I cried… (with laughter). At one point, I even found myself chanting ‘off off off!’ Purely in the interests of research, of course.
