All Ears article (week 3)

Here's article for week 3:

The ethics of professional nudity are one of the great default arguments

that daytime television, talk radio, columnists and occasionally frontline

politics will elect to shine their dubious lights upon when there’s nothing

else to talk about. It came as no big surprise then to find myself adjacent

to two drinkers discussing the art of what Tina Turner called “Private

Dancing,” albeit from a somewhat subjective point of view.

Man 1 “She made eight hundred quid in her first week.”

Man 2 “Christ, so that’s her now then. No going back…how she’s getting

on?”

Man 1 “Well she does get on with things-I admire that about her. She

says the blokes are just-well you can imagine…”

Man 2 “What?”

Man 1 “Well, you know. They’ll show her a picture of a Ferrari on their

iPhone and say, ‘That’s my car, I can take you away from all this, you’re

too good for it.’ But, there they are…”

Man 2 “What does she say to all that?”

Man 1 “You have to play up to it. They told her, you can’t crack on that

you’re clever. You have to act the part. You can read books if it’s quiet but

you have to wrap up them up inside a copy of Heat or something.”

Man 2 “Yeah, I can see that.”

Man 1 “She had one lot of blokes come in that she said were alright. They

said it was the first time they’d been and she told them it was her first

night-which was true. They said they’d give her all the money she had,

which was plenty, if, when she got on the stage, half way through the

routine she started doing robotics.”

Man 2 (laughing) “Did she do it?”

Man 1 (laughing too) “No, she bottled it.”

Man 2 “I’d pay good money to see that.”

Man 1 “I’ll let her know.”

Michael Holden