A court in Oslo ruled this week that striptease should be classed as an art form, along with opera and ballet.

The ruling was important, because Norwegian strip club owners can now apply for tax exemptions, in the same way as other art forms.

Should we do the same in the UK?

Originally posted by LordChaverly
A court in Oslo ruled this week that striptease should be classed as an art form, along with opera and ballet.

The ruling was important, because Norwegian strip club owners can now apply for tax exemptions, in the same way as other art forms.

Should we do the same in the UK?

Oh Yes! I hear ye Chaverley!!

Not in our house it ain`t:wink:
just a means to an end :wink:

That depends on whether the emphasis is on the strip or the tease! I would class burlesque as an artform where the emphasis is on the tease rather than what currently passes as striptease (i.e. get your bits out as quickly as possible, wave them in punters face and get off with the money!) I wouldn't class as an artform. Hmmmm wonder if I oculd get a job as an art assessor!

I believe that until the late 1950s in the UK (and possibly lasting until the early 1960s) women were not allowed to move on stage while naked. Strip shows of the time therefore consisted of women adopting artistic poses, but remaining motionless - in order that it could be classified as art. How times change!

Originally posted by evildrneil
That depends on whether the emphasis is on the strip or the tease! I would class burlesque as an artform where the emphasis is on the tease rather than what currently passes as striptease (i.e. get your bits out as quickly as possible, wave them in punters face and get off with the money!) I wouldn't class as an artform. Hmmmm wonder if I oculd get a job as an art assessor!

I actually prefer the 'cut to the chase' approach to stripping Doc. I'm not so fond of the teasing part! At christmas time i have always been a ripper rather than an unwrapper!

Dear Lord Chaverley
I am male , 63 years-old and will shortly be returning to the U.K.
Could you use your enormous power and influence to help me find an opening in the world of Striptease ?
Failing that , I'm sure a job in the dressing rooms or somewhere similar would be right up my street.
I thank you in anticipation of your help and/or advice on this urgent matter.
{ If it's any help , my Great-Uncle was 3rd. under-gardener at your vast pile and retired at the age of 87. He often spoke of the strange goings-on in the servant's quarters ]
Yours......etc......etc.......

I imagine we all take our clothes off, but to perform a striptease would I think be classed as an art to do it seductively.

I have been to Spearmint Rhino (purely for research purposes you understand) and I must admit those were very classy ladies and I thought them as appealing as any artform. Venus d milo (i know its spelt wrong) eat your heart out.

Originally posted by Fareast
Dear Lord Chaverley
I am male , 63 years-old and will shortly be returning to the U.K.
Could you use your enormous power and influence to help me find an opening in the world of Striptease ?
Failing that , I'm sure a job in the dressing rooms or somewhere similar would be right up my street.
I thank you in anticipation of your help and/or advice on this urgent matter.
{ If it's any help , my Great-Uncle was 3rd. under-gardener at your vast pile and retired at the age of 87. He often spoke of the strange goings-on in the servant's quarters ]
Yours......etc......etc.......

Dear Far East, I have examined your credentials and am of the opinion that you will be well suited for a post as a male stripper. At 63, you will be in less danger than younger personnel of violating the Mull of Kintyre rule concerning the exposure of male private parts (you will of course be prohibited from taking any little blue pills prior to your performances).

Originally posted by soupy
I have been to Spearmint Rhino (purely for research purposes you understand) and I must admit those were very classy ladies and I thought them as appealing as any artform. Venus d milo (i know its spelt wrong) eat your heart out.

Did you obtain a grant from the Arts Council for this? And have the results of your research been published yet in a reputable academic journal?

Dear Lord Chaverly

God bless you , my Lord for your prompt reply ; however , to be quite honest , I wish you'd have left my credentials out of the discussion altogether. I know I'll have to produce my credentials at any future job interview and , believe me , I've displayed them on many occasions in the past but I didn't want to , "jump the gun " , so to speak. I may add , at this point, that I've often had huge bonuses when working at my former profession , male model [ Y-fronts 1964 campaign ].
You can rest assured that there will be no hanky or even panky , for that matter , when I do my artistic performance. However , I cannot be held responsible for the actions of any young ladies , or gentlemen , who may get , "carried away" by my display.In the past , I'm afraid there have been incidents and even times when my bonus was cut to the quick.
I will be forwarding photographs later. Please look after them . Most of them were taken at the Scunthorpe and Brigg Working Mens Club and Bistro [1967 ].A rough lot but hearts of gold !
I think your suggestion of a 60% commission , paid to yourself , is a bit on the steep side but if you can get me on the ladder of success , who cares ? I , too , could be pole dancing this time next year !

The trick is to arouse in men confusion
Beyond what's obfuscated by a string
And not remove all doubt for the illusion
Is better than not wearing anything.

J. Patrick Lewis


;) :thumbsup: t'old Pat knows what he's on about :P

Originally posted by Lestat
The trick is to arouse in men confusion
Beyond what's obfuscated by a string
And not remove all doubt for the illusion
Is better than not wearing anything.

J. Patrick Lewis


;) :thumbsup: t'old Pat knows what he's on about :P

This sentiment is actually reflected in the economics of many strip clubs. In many of them, once you have paid your way in you can stay as long as you like. The owners calculate that the punters will quickly get bored with so much naked flesh and will leave after an hour or two.

The project was pulled before I had chance to complete my research I had another 11 trips to Spearmint rhino and a couple of visits to the silver dollar planned when they pulled my funding so no tipping dollars :( :(

Originally posted by LordChaverly
Did you obtain a grant from the Arts Council for this? And have the results of your research been published yet in a reputable academic journal?

Lord Chaverley,
This thread is an affront to modesty. We have the degrading spectacle of a 63 year old man seeking employment in the 'sex industry', boasting of how he debased himself amongst the perverts of Scunthorpe and Brigg. You are turning the forum into a cyber house of depravity. Lord Chaverley? Lord of Misrule, more like! Cease this unseemly lubricity at once!

Timo, you will no doubt be aware of the current lacuna in pensions funds, requiring older people to work longer and retire later. As far asI am aware there is nothing in current employment legislation which limits the occupations of silver haired workers (commonly known as the 'Q tips) to shelf stacking at Sainsburys or greeting at Asda. I am offering Far East a promising opportunity to enter a niche market

As for lubricity, I would agree you can have too much of it, but in the right amount it can make all the difference.

Lord Chaverly,
What a shameful excuse! You are peddling filth, and exploiting this poor, bewildered man's viagra-induced desire to lewdly disport himself in public. One looks to the old, landed families, like Chaverly for patrician guidance in these difficult times. One does not expect his lordship to behave like a common pimp!

By the way, my family would be very grateful if you would kindly return the portfolio of candid photographs showing my maternal grandfather disrobing at Wincobank Rabbit and Poultry Club [1971]. Please take him off your books too. We will never forgive how you cynically exploited this senile pensioner, forcing him into your production of the gay burlesque, 'Tinseltown Tushes'.

"Ere ,

I strongly object to being used as a sort of geriatic ping-pong ball between the Forces of Timo and the Ranks of Lord Chaverly.
I'll have you lot know that if I want to disport myself , I will do. If you want to take my particulars down and check my testimonials , well , so be it , but I won't have any talk of lubricants bandied about for all and sundry to chortle over.
My profession as male model , striptease artiste and , [hopefully] pole-dancer is a perfectly serious affair.The audiences at venues like Scunthorpe , Widnes , Pontefract and.....yes.....even Wincobank Tush-times Gay Bar and Funhouse , gave me their all , whenever I displayed my growing talents.
Growing old is bad enough but when even a gentleman and a scholar , like Lord Chaverly [ Gawd bless him ] tries to take you for a ride , well it's simply not on.As for the Timo person ,I can only conclude he is one of our younger members of society and so does not recognise the big things in life when they are staring him in the face .....er......as it were.

Fareast,
I am a gentleman scholar, deeply concerned with the forum's descent into a philosophy of perverted vice. You sir, are a Merry Andrew of the first water! Pole dancing! So, a decent Christian people like the Polish are being corrupted too. Really this is too much. I'm going to faint.

Timo :-
Well , gentleman scholar you may be but let me tell you that even those Poles like a bit of Hows Your Father when the mood takes 'em.
I will never forget my Pensioners Peel-Off Revue at the Gdansk Gay All Day Bistro in '99-----or Ladies ' Night in Lvov in '98 , when things really got out of hand -----or rather , in hand.I'm sure if Lord Chaverly is as upstanding as he makes out and offers me an opening , I will go down well in Eastern Europe , particularly , as they will rarely have seen anything like my performance before.
If you have any secret ambitions yourself , in this line , have you ever considered forming a sort of duet ? We could call it , "The Twins With The Tassells" or , "The Lords of The Ring " , depending on the clientele ?
I will leave it to you to put it forcefully to Lord Chaverly and let's see if he can accommodate the two of us ? Maybe we could use his vast pile for our opening night ? I've known worse places for openings , believe me.

Dear Timo,

The gauntlet will not go unpicked up! I I see that once again my motives in seeking to offer FarEast gainful employment as a male striptease artiste have been shamelessly impugned. This unwarranted attack upon my integrity cannot go unchallenged. And I have instructed my lawyers to examine your written statement in full for its potentially libellous implications. I have enough trouble as it is from Lady Chaverly, who has become in my view unreasonably suspicious about my penchant for employing lissom, comely and pulchitrudinous young ladies, with understanding and obliging dispositions, as maid servants. She is constantly questioning my ‘Rector of Stiffkey’ explanation that my motives as an employer are purely altruistic.

In the case of my offer of employment to Far East, the facts are these: it is a well documented fact that groups of women at male striptease shows are likely to quickly loose their decorum and inhibitions and become creatures of unbridled lust. I accept that the sight of Fareast’s gyrating and naked posterior is likely to send his female audience into paroxysms of desire. However, At 63, Fareast will be less likely to succumb to their rampant advances than someone of less mature years.. You will no doubt be aware of Tom Gun’s famous lines:

An old man’s lust is not worth a lot
Its desperate and dry, even when hot.

At 63, Far East, is no longer chained to the wild beast of lust, as Socrates might have said. Raising the Titanic would be easier than it would be for Far East to rise to the occasion, or indeed for his private parts to rise at all. He will therefore be able to resist the blandishments of his aroused clientele, whether these offers take the form of knickers and bras with phone numbers written on them thrown onto the stage or of less discrete verbal blandishments of which the less said the better. I hope you will therefore understand that my offer to Far East is not only meant to provide gainful employment to a man of mature years, but will also in its own small way make a contribution to the upholding of moral standards, thereby arresting the decline of our society.

As for your reference to me as a ‘Lord of Misrule’, I suggest you are confusing me with those recently elevated to the second chamber of St. James’ Palace by the current incumbent of 10 Downing Street.

I am Sir,

Chaverley

My Lord,
Please forgive me. On reflection, I see the rigorous logic of your argument. At such an advanced age, Fareast is indeed far less likely to give way to the dogs of lust. Your erudite familiarity with the poetry of Gunn impresses me deeply, and is cogent supportive evidence for your case.

I humbly beg your forgiveness for my impetuous rush to condemn your motives, and most especially for insulting your family name. I now know that you are a true Knight of the Shires, and not the gin-sodden, rakehelly Macaroni and Fop so cruelly satirised in Gentleman's Weekly.

With regard to Fareast's sagging libido, my Lord, may I offer the following lines? They are from a little known Wincobank poet, Albert Bickerdyke ['When a Man Grows Old']...

MOD: Removed as this is a family forum.

I am sure you will agree, my Lord, that the poet captures Fareast's dilemma perfectly, and with such resonant beauty.

Your humble servant ,
Timo

I don't know if you two gentlemen have any sense of decorum at all , but I don't think it's right and proper [ especially from a Lord] that my private parts should be bandied about in public ; they get enough of that as it is.
I don't know what you and your friends discussed , Lord Chaverly , at Eton , but talk of things , "below the waist " , was always very muted when I was a mere stripling. Can I add , too , that if I ever come across that there Tom Gun , he'll get what's coming to him , you mark my words.I'll have you know that on the odd occasion [ and believe me , some of the occasions have been very odd ] , there's still a bit of a flame in the old bunsen burner and a shrapnel of lead left in the old pencil.
I may not have the full vigour of Youth operating on "full steam ahead" but there are some ladies and gentlemen who prefer the soft approach-----and I can certainly offer them that.
I note with surprise that Mr. Timo did not take up my offer to form a sort of Dancing Tassled Duo------but I can see why now-------pure unalloyed jealousy at my assets.

Fareast,
I did not join you in your 'tassle dancing' because I did not wish to introduce an element of self-consciousness into our relationship. The sight of my lithe, muscled and oiled young body might make you painfully aware of your less supple, stretch-marked, bloated torso. I am trying to be kind here.

MOD: Can we please keep the level of debate above the gutter? Thank you.

Timo:-

I think Max has put an end to our conversation. Obviously Striptease and Humour don't mix easily !

Fareast,
We must remember that this is a family forum. Perhaps my inclusion of Bickerdyke's Rabelaisian verse was a step too far. Apologies all round, especially to Max.

Timo The Wordsmith,
I'm surprised at the tone which you have pro/regressively adopted in this thread - i held you in high regard and am disspointed in your subtle but rather provocative musings :o

I cant believe no-one has mentioned the word ecdysiast yet.

Ecdysiasts are artist, strippers are not.

Originally posted by Phanerothyme
I cant believe no-one has mentioned the word ecdysiast yet.

Ecdysiasts are artist, strippers are not.

No? - cos it's such a popular word in the English vernacular isn't it...

It will be in sheffield......

One somehow doubts that, old bean.

Timo,

I have searched through my copies of Palgrave's Golden Treasury of Verse' (including the updated versions) and can find no entries for Bickerdyke. I may well be the case that his reputation never recovered from F.R.Leavis's comment on his work: 'every man has a poem in him somewhere - and in Bickerdyke's case, that's precisely where it should stay'.

I personally think the Leavis judgement is unfair, because at its best Bickerdyke's work displays a remarkable talent for capturing the rhythms and cadences of demotic speech. Far from deriving from the creative well of Rabbalais, I think the influences on his work can be conclusively traced back to the British Isles - to Chaucerian ribaldry and Byronic iconoclasm, with traces of Robert Burns in his more priapic moods and even to the elegaic musings of McGonegall.

As you know, Bickerdyke was killed on the first day of the battle of the Somme in 1916, and was thus part of the lost generation of talented young artists of the Edwardian era. It is less well known that he had continued writing verse in the trenches and who knows has le lived longer could now be categorised with Wilfrid Owen and other great war poets. Fragements of his later verse, written on odd bits of paper were found in his rucksack. An fine example is the following:

Here we are in the trenches
Without any wenches
Up to our necks in bullets and muck
.................................................. .....


(Unfortunately the next lines cannot be shown, as this is a family forum).

Oh what a loss to English verse was the German machine gun bullet that silenced him in his prime. Given his talent for rhyming couplets, what great poetic potential would he have found in the word 'tank' (unfortuately, tanks did not appear on the Western front until after his demise).

Chaverly

Hmmmmmm.....most of the great painters seem to have spent a fair bit of their time studying lasses getting their kit off.

So the Norwegians have classified stripping as an art form. These northern Europeans have an odd take on stripping.

I was once in a Copenhagen gay pub. An annoucement was made that Hans would be performing a strip routine. Lights were dimmed. Music began to play. In the glare of a spotlight, a blonde, athletic looking, young man climbed on to a table-top. He was stark naked! Without more ado, he dropped onto the said table-top a pile of clothes he was holding in his hands, and after turning full circle twice, proceeded to get dressed!

The 'strip' was all over within a couple of minutes. Everyone applauded and went back to the more serious concerns of drinking and talking. A Dane later told me that their male strippers knew what the punters wanted to see - and therefore couldn't see the point in tantalising the customers with all the nonsense of taking their clothes off!

My dear Lord Chaverly,
May I assure you that Albert Bickerdyke's inspiration and major influence was indeed the work of Rabelais. He cared little for Chaucer, preferring tales of Pantagruel and Gargantua infinitely more. What a great shame it is that I am unable [because this is a family forum] to quote from his many, celebrated works. My ancestor's, 'The Maid of Shiregreen', 'Ode to a Ragman's Trumpet' and ' The Lusty Tinker of Wincobank Hill', deserve wider readership. He has been denied his rightful place in the canon of English poetry, chiefly because of his ribald use of coloquial vernacular, and also because of his index offences. Referred to as , 'An obscene little coward', by my late Great Grandmother, Gertrude Coppinger- Bickerdyke, my family rarely mention him.

So the Norwegians have classified stripping as an art form. These northern Europeans have an odd take on stripping.

I was once in a Copenhagen gay pub. An annoucement was made that Hans would be performing a strip routine. Lights were dimmed. Music began to play. In the glare of a spotlight, a blonde, athletic looking, young man climbed on to a table-top. He was stark naked! Without more ado, he dropped onto the said table-top a pile of clothes he was holding in his hands, and after turning full circle twice, proceeded to get dressed!

The 'strip' was all over within a couple of minutes. Everyone applauded and went back to the more serious concerns of drinking and talking. A Dane later told me that their male strippers knew what the punters wanted to see - and therefore couldn't see the point in tantalising the customers with all the nonsense of taking their clothes off!
i find that amusing redrobbo that u saw a male stripper and he decide that they was no point stripping and just start at the naked point etc,being a male stripper myself the whole point of the entertaining is the teasing part.if they is no teasing whats the point lol

You can do a striptease in your own private space, you don't have to got to a club and pay for one. Some good music, a bit of imagination and NO KIDS AROUND!

Dear Lord Chaverley
...................Could you use your enormous power and influence to help me find an opening in the world of Striptease ?

...........................Yours......etc......etc .......


:hihi: :hihi: :hihi: :hihi:

Its funny how this thread has risen like Lazarus, after lying dormant for such a long time (rather like FarEast's private parts). :hihi:

So the Norwegians have classified stripping as an art form. These northern Europeans have an odd take on stripping.

I was once in a Copenhagen gay pub. An annoucement was made that Hans would be performing a strip routine. Lights were dimmed. Music began to play. In the glare of a spotlight, a blonde, athletic looking, young man climbed on to a table-top. He was stark naked! Without more ado, he dropped onto the said table-top a pile of clothes he was holding in his hands, and after turning full circle twice, proceeded to get dressed!

The 'strip' was all over within a couple of minutes. Everyone applauded and went back to the more serious concerns of drinking and talking. A Dane later told me that their male strippers knew what the punters wanted to see - and therefore couldn't see the point in tantalising the customers with all the nonsense of taking their clothes off!

It is high time Red Robbo admitted that he himself was the 'blonde, athletic-looking young man' referred to in his posting [above]. There is little point in false modesty or futile pretence. For years it has been whispered that 'Red' has a reputation throughout Europe in the world of Gay Burlesque and Male Lap-Dancing. I have it on the best authority that he is famous for his 'British spunk' throughout the Continent, and not for nothing is he known as 'Big Helmut' in Frankfurt.

If any ladies want to practice their artform, I'm more than happy to offer my expert critique.

If any ladies want to practice their artform, I'm more than happy to offer my expert critique.

I am sure this lady will be happy to take up your generous offer (notice the presence of the goat, in case the allure of the lady in question fails to work its magic on you).

http://www.annwiddecombemp.com/

What a stunner.

That depends on whether the emphasis is on the strip or the tease! I would class burlesque as an artform where the emphasis is on the tease rather than what currently passes as striptease (i.e. get your bits out as quickly as possible, wave them in punters face and get off with the money!) I wouldn't class as an artform. Hmmmm wonder if I oculd get a job as an art assessor!

Do you think I could start a profession as a fine art tease? Flashing a bit of Monet or Picasso in some punters face for a quick tenner? 'heh, heh! look at these sunflowers... you like these don't ya! yeah.... YEAH....'