BRAVE NEW UNOERWORLD SIR.—I must put Cyril Ray right on
three points. I did not insinuate myself in the strip-clubs disguised as a member, but declared myself as a journalist col- lecting copy: the reception was cagy but finally acquiescent (probably because. as I mentioned, the publicity the strip-clubs had hitherto received may have been sensational but was equivocal and probably not, in the view of the entrepreneurs, without value).
Second, Mr. Ray is wrong in supposing that women arc not admitted. In several of the clubs I visited there was a sprinkling of accompanied women. Whether they were being softened up by their escorts, or were merely curious about the mysteries of the pre-eminently male magic circle, it was impossible to tell from their dead-pan absence of reaction. One girl sitting near me one evening looked as if she was trying hard to attend interestedly to a lecture on military history—which may support the belief that women are opaquely invulnerable to the visual stimulation that apparently so readily affects men.
As to Mr. Ray's final question whether this is 'just another manifestation of our English hypocrisy' or whether London's clubs 'really are lewder and more obscene than those of Hamburg,' casting back to my memories of the Hamburg joints of ten years ago, I think the answer is 'Yes'—and I don't see anything 'hypocritical' about saying so. However, Mr. Ray was not wholly able to assess the degree of lewdness as several factual sentences were excised—no doubt for sound reasons of propriety—from my report.—Yours faithfully,
Gurneys, Holwell, Hitchin, Nerts
KENNETH ALLSOP
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